2023 SEMINAR SERIES:

Thursday 23 March, 13:00-14:30 (SAST)
Room 401, Arts and Social Sciences Building, SU

Sex and the Village: Theorizing the Rural through Scandal in Himalayan India

Prof. Radhika Govindrajan
Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Washington

This talk explores how scandals around sex and sexuality in rural north India provide openings for villagers to variously theorize the condition of contemporary rurality. In it, I trace how scandalous love affairs provoke reflection on a series of vexed questions: What does it mean to be a villager who lives gaonpana (in the village)? What habits, sensibilities, relationalities, antagonisms, intimacies, and accountabilities constitute a real village? What kinds of attachment are appropriate to social life in the village?