Events

Jointly organized by Asia Research Institute and South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Vineeta Sinha, South Asian Studies Programme, and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Education is for poor people in agrarian Andhra Pradesh, India and Central Lombok, Indonesia the means of getting ahead, at the same time that structural conditions have diminished its potential. This paper considers the consequences of education’s failures for parents’ positioning within a society that is purported to be ‘moving forward’. I draw upon Berlant (2011) and Ahmed (2010) to argue that attachment to the idea of progress through education is critical to one’s sense of self, anchoring the self to conventional hopes and desires as a way to survive present-day uncertainties. It is the almost impossibility of getting ahead through education that establishes its theoretical possibility, and hence the obligation to pursue normative aspirations. In this way hope not only anchors the poor to conventional ways of getting ahead, it also frustrates the ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai 2004) by concealing alternative pathways to collective future horizons. This paper aims to provoke discussion as to the consequences of hope for advancement through education across India and Indonesia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Tanya Jakimow is an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia). After obtaining her PhD in Development Studies from the University of Melbourne, she was appointed as a postdoctoral fellow in the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Australia. She has since contributed to interdisciplinary research projects examining agrarian change in the context of climate variability. Tanya has published journal articles on topics such as livelihoods, agrarian change, and non-government organisations. Her recent manuscript, Interpreting change in agrarian societies: a case for decentring development and centring the ‘self-in-process’ is to be published under the Anthropology, Change and Development Series by Palgrave MacMillan. Her current research project shifts attention to urban localities in India and Indonesia, examining how new forms of decentralised governance and state-led development influence ‘processes-of-self’.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP to Ms Tay Minghua via email: minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg.