A series of three public lectures, by Professor Elizabeth Harman (in-person only). Lecture 2 of 3.

What does love teach us about abortion? How does love challenge our ideas about abortion? How can love explain the importance of abortion?

A series of three public lectures, by Professor Elizabeth Harman (in-person only). Lecture 1 of 3.

What does love teach us about abortion? How does love challenge our ideas about abortion? How can love explain the importance of abortion?

The era of liberal interventionism is over. And the prevailing international discourse is once again about defending state borders and putting up walls. This broad re-assertion of sovereignty and non-intervention---often considered the normative foundation of the BRICS countries, of the Non-Aligned Movement, of Bandung, of the “Westphalian” South---raises a series of difficult questions, not least about the management of challenges shared by all. How are we to make sense of re-organisations of intervention and non-intervention in global order?

Wealth in India is concentrated amongst a few privileged social groups in urban areas. What is the relationship between wealth, caste, and elite action? Agarwals, a business caste in Delhi that belongs to the vernacular category baniya, is selected as the case study for analysis. By drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations made over four years, I argue that elites use caste to produce a moral and empowering self-narrative to produce caste cohesion.

In a society that experiences secessionist conflict, many things are not what they seem. The book presented in this talk (which is available open access via the CUP website) adopts a performative perspective to understand the peculiar institutional landscape the ensued around the Tamil separatist conflict in Sri Lanka, both during and after the civil war. It draws on two decades of fieldwork across towns and villages in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, ethnography within Sri Lanka’s civil service, and privileged access to Norwegian-facilitated peace process.

Networked Bollywood provides interdisciplinary analysis of the role of the stars in the transformation of Hindi cinema into a global entertainment industry. The first Indian film was made in 1913. However, filmmaking was recognized as an industry almost a hundred years later. Yet, Indian films have been circulating globally since their inception. This book unearths this oft-elided history of Bollywood's globalization through multilingual, transnational research and discursive cultural analysis.