[ecrea] Everyday Life in Contemporary India - International Conference

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Everyday Life in Contemporary India
International Conference
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17 & 18 December 2014
University of Madras
Chennai, India

Call for Papers

The Department of Journalism & Communication, University of Madras, 
India, the Department of Media, Film & Communication, University of 
Otago, New Zealand, & New Zealand India Research Institute jointly 
organise the international conference titled "Everyday Life in 
Contemporary India".

This conference explores the everyday lives and experiences of people in 
contemporary India. It seeks to critically interrogate and debate the 
varied ways in which everyday life in India is played out, acted upon, 
and conceived. The Indian everyday is diverse, heterogeneous, and 
changing rapidly. Multiple complimentary and contradictory forces 
circulate and compete, and new social divisions, solidarities, and 
struggles for recognition and legitimacy animate the contemporary Indian 
everyday. At a time when India is at a critical juncture in its 
globalization story, Everyday Life in Contemporary India seeks to 
examine the ways that people negotiate, traverse and engage various 
aspects of their everyday life. The aim of the conference is to examine 
the complexities of the everyday and provide a platform to foster a 
deeper understanding of socio-cultural life in contemporary India. We 
welcome papers from a variety of disciplines — cultural studies, social 
and cultural geography, media studies, communication studies, sociology, 
anthropology, history, literature, visual culture, and politics — that 
theoretically and critically engage with selected aspects of everyday 
life in contemporary India.


We invite papers to address the following broad concerns:

• How do people cultivate practices, activities, practical techniques, 
tactics, and social bonds in order to negotiate everyday life in 
contemporary India?

• How do they cultivate horizons that provide them with the impetus, 
direction, and desire to construct a future?

• What is the impact of this on different aspects of their lived 
realities — gender relations, production and consumption patterns, 
lifestyle choices, family structures, religion, social distinctions 
(caste and class), politics, sense of belonging, sexuality, community 
and culture?

• How are cultural practices and political attitudes changing and 
shifted in contemporary India? What has remained unchanged, or perhaps 
been hybridized? What new experiences and practices animate metropolitan 
cities and rural communities? How have public spaces been reconfigured? 
How are social hierarchies articulated? What is the role and location of 
new media in the negotiation of private/public spheres and the 
transformation of everyday life?

• Whose everyday are we talking about? How might we theorize everyday 
life in contemporary India? What regimes of inequalities continue to 
prevail, in what circumstances have new ones formed? How do state & 
global policies impact local everyday practices? Have patterns of social 
mobility remained static or been transformed? How are citizens and city 
planners responding to these contemporary changes in India? How is the 
diaspora reconfiguring the Indian everyday?


Abstract Submission

The conference committee will accept abstracts until 10 November 2014.

Paper proposals can be submitted to (contemlifeindia14 /at/ gmail.com). 
Proposals should include title, author's name/s, affiliation, contact 
email address, a short abstract (no more than 300 words), and a 100-word 
bio.


Duration & Venue

The proposed conference will be for two days, on 17-18 December 2014. It 
will be organized in Chennai at the University of Madras (Chepauk 
Campus) premises.

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