Keywords in South Asian Public Culture

This course aims to provide students with a solid understanding of important contemporary debates in the study of South Asian public culture. Introducing key themes through critical and current ethnographic work, this course focuses on the tangible public forms that global cultural flows, political economies and social formations take. This emphasis on contemporary public culture allows a concrete consideration of abstract and changing social and cultural forces that define the region. The course will be informed by the existing concerns in the anthropology of South Asia but focuses on areas largely neglected by it. Inspired by Raymond Williams' 'keywords' approach to culture and society, this course examines the subcontinent from unexpected and innovative angles by gathering key ethnographic readings under conceptual keywords to be explored empirically and theoretically. The course will approach the region as an integrated socio-cultural whole, rather than a set of self-contained nation-states. The postgraduate component will require students to engage in-depth with selected key texts, both theoretical investigations and empirical studies, and to reflect on the relevance of these for their own dissertation research. Credit Level: 11 Year taken: Postgraduate

Not running in 2025/26