Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Chand Somaiah, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and Yale-NUS College

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

Fleeting agencies disrupts the male-dominated narratives by focusing on gendered patterns of migration and showing how South Asian women labour migrants engaged with the process of migration, interacted with other migrants and negotiated colonial laws. This is the first study of Indian coolie women in British Malaya to date. In exploring the politicization of labour migration trends and gender relations in the colonial plantation society in British Malaya, the author foregrounds how the migrant Indian ‘coolie’ women manipulated colonial legal and administrative perceptions of Indian women; their gender-prescriptive roles, relations within patriarchal marriage institutions, and even the emerging Indian national independence movement in India and Malaya. All this, to ensure their survival, escape from unfavourable relations and situations, and improve their lives. The book also introduces the concept of situational or fleeting agency, which contributes to further a nuanced understanding of agency in the lives of Indian coolie women.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Arunima Datta is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Idaho State University. She is a scholar in the fields of South and Southeast Asian history, British imperialism, and transnational history. Her recent book Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women (published by Cambridge University Press) recently won the National Women’s Studies Association Whaley Book Prize Award. Her work has appeared in several leading journals like Journal of Historical Geography, Journal of Victorian Culture, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Journal of Women’s History Review, Journal of Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, and she has forthcoming articles in the journals of Labour History and Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She has also authored award-winning public history articles like: “Punkhawallas: Keeping India Cool” and “Shampoo Empire” published in History Today and other venues. Dr Datta has also appeared on the BBCSounds podcast with her public history piece on Shampoo Empire. She is currently working on her second book manuscript, which will be published by Oxford University Press. This book examines the everyday lives of South and Southeast Asian traveling Ayahs and Amahs in Britain. In support of this project, she was recently awarded a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, sponsored by the National Endowment for Humanities. Dr Datta serves on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals. She is the associate editor of Gender and History and Journal of Britain and the World.

Vineeta Sinha is Professor at the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. She holds a Masters in Social Science from the National University of Singapore, and a Masters of Arts degree and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include Hindu religiosity in the diaspora, intersections of religion, commodification and consumption processes, interface of religion and materiality, religion-state encounters in colonial and post-colonial moments, formation of concepts and categories in the social sciences, Eurocentric and androcentric critique of classical sociological theory, pedagogy and innovating alternative teaching practices. Her publications include A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore (2005, Singapore: NUS Press and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies); Religion and Commodification: Merchandising Diasporic Hinduism (2010, London: Routledge); Religion-State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore (2011 Dordrecht: Springer); Singapore Chronicles: INDIANS (2015, Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings); Food, Foodways and Foodscapes: Culture, Community and Consumption in Post-Colonial Singapore (co-edited with Lily Kong, 2015, Singapore: World Scientific Press); Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (co-authored with Syed Farid Alatas, 2017, London: Palgrave-Macmillan) and Southeast Asian Anthropologies (co-edited with Eric Thompson, Singapore: NUS Press, 2019). She is Associate Editor of The Sociological Quarterly, Editorial Board Member of American Ethnologist, Current Sociology and Co-Editor of Routledge International Library of Sociology.

Sneha Annavarapu is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College. An ethnographer by training, Sneha’s wide-ranging research interests center around urbanization, governance, class relations, and gender in contemporary India. Sneha has published articles in academic journals such as Social Problems, Journal of Historical Sociology, and Journal of Consumer Culture and is a regular host on the New Books Network podcast.

Andrew Willford produces work that characteristically explores aspects of selfhood, identity, and subjectivity within a matrix of power and statecraft. His current research and book-in-preparation concerns mental health and psychiatry in India, and has been recently awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair Fellowship for teaching and research in India. His is the author of The Future of Bangalore’s Cosmopolitan Pasts: Civility and Difference in a Global City (University of Hawaii, 2018); Tamils and the Haunting of Justice: History and Recognition in Malaysia’s Plantations (University of Hawaii Press, 2014); Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia (University of Michigan Press, 2006), Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Andrew Willford and Kenneth George, eds. (Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2005), and Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries between History and Anthropology, Andrew Willford and Eric Tagliacozzo, eds. (Stanford University Press, 2009).

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.