Nanda R. and Pamela L. Shrestha Fund for Honouring Nepal Scholars

Belonging in Motion: Contested Social Boundaries in South Asia
by
Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka

30 September 2022, Friday | 2 pm | Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur

Speakers
Pranika Koyu
(Writer and human rights professional)
Anju Pandit
(Consultant, Karnali Water Activity and ICIMOD)
Binod Pokhrel
(Professor, Central Department of Anthropology, Tribhuvan University)
Sagar Raj Sharma
(Professor, School of Arts, Kathmandu University)
&
Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka

From the back cover
More and more people are seeking to mould the modalities of their belong­ing. They contest unjust and unequal hierarchies that are externally imposed such as when the state stipulates the hierarchical rank of every caste and ethnic group, and defines their derived rights and duties therefrom. Belonging also becomes an issue in situations of spatial and social mobility or when personal choices collide with group norms. This collection focuses on the dynamic interactions of community, inequality, and power in Nepal and India from the venture point of be­longing—understood as an interplay of commonality, mutuality and attach­ments. It draws upon empirical cases while offering new conceptual tools for grasping the dynamic forces of belong­ing in contemporary world.

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Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany. Until July 2019, she was a Senate member of the German Research Foundation, Dean of her Faculty and Co-Director of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Research, ZIF. Her current research focusses on knowledge production and circulation, on belonging as well as on the ‘social life’ of universities (especially the nexus of inequality and heterogeneity).

Pfaff-Czarnecka studied and worked at the University of Zurich. She also worked at the University of Bonn and for a number of development organisations and for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She has taught and visited at the Universities of Bern, Oxford, Tokyo, New Delhi, Kathmandu, and Jawaharlal Nehru University.

To listen or download in audio format
Belonging in Motion: Contested Social Boundaries in South Asia