We are excited to announce the call for papers for the 22nd Annual South Asia Graduate Student Conference hosted by the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago. This year’s conference theme is Theorizing Capitalism from South Asia. The conference will take place on March 6th and 7th 2025.
This year’s theme: South Asia exemplifies the contradictions of contemporary capitalism: a rapidly expanding stock market with high return for investors and high aggregate economic growth continue to coexist with unprecedented ecological crises, uneven-development, and absolute poverty. Yet the ideologues of market fundamentalism across the region continue to demand for greater state retraction even as neoliberal restructuring policies strengthen existing caste-class divides, landlessness, and environmental distress. Amidst this, new alliances between states and capitalists are forming giving rise to neo-cronyism, militant ethno-nationalism, rent-seeking, and super-exploitation. It is equally important to stress that this process is far from frictionless: emerging horizons of resistance and crisis are concretizing in the form of farmers protests in India; the failure of the rentier state and neoliberal austerity in Sri Lanka; and peasant movements against privatization of agrarian land in Lahore, to name just a few.
How do we then theorize capitalism from South Asia to advance our political agenda of addressing these variegated manifestations of economic, political, and ecological distress at a time when the hegemony of capitalism in South Asia is imploding from within? What does centering South Asia reveal about the imminent contradictions of global capitalism? Our goal is to not only think through the specificity of capitalism in South Asia, but to understand how these specificities unfold and challenge the world-systemic structure of capitalism. With this shared goal, we welcome current graduate students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to submit paper proposals to theorize capitalism. The focus is contemporary South Asia, but long durational historical analysis that contributes to understanding this contemporary moment of capitalist de-development are also invited. For more information, please visit our website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/…/call-for-papers…/ .
Only one abstract per person will be allowed. We will notify applicants of a decision by early January 2025. The University of Chicago will provide food and lodging for the two days of the conference. The University will also assist with travel reimbursement, but we encourage students to seek support from their home institutions if possible. As this year’s conference will be held in-person, virtual attendance is not allowed; exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis, for example, in the case of attendees traveling from outside the US who cannot obtain visas. If you have any questions, please write to the organizing committee at sagsc2025@gmail.com.