Dear Colleagues,

I should like to draw your attention to a conference dealing with the notion of "South Asia" as a geopolitical construct with hegemonic agendas:
http://habib.edu.pk/questioningsouthasia/

[Announcement excerpt]

"The geopolitical significance of South Asia has been a well-known fact in policy and security studies for the last several decades. In academic circles too, the logic of South Asia has become a naturalized reality: its appearance in the area studies departments of many US/western institutions signals acquiescence if not participation in an agenda informed by pursuit of global hegemony. The naturalisation of South Asia as a discourse recalls European precedents of producing knowledge about the ‘other’ in order to foster a morally and epistemologically superior European identity – as witnessed in the historical invention of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. [...] Questioning South Asia as a discourse that at present burdens the scholarly imagination, and overdetermines conference agendas and research funding, might reconfigure the strategies we employ to understand the region. Some of the questions we seek to investigate are: What are the obstacles to developing comparative research perspectives for scholars constrained by ‘South Asia’? How can we shift away from the dominant framework of South Asia as an already-determined category, and devise new research agendas? And what demands for change, transformation, or recalibration might this place on us as subjects undertaking research?"

Kindly regarding,

Walter Slaje

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Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar
Deutschland

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et provecturum
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sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.