Indiascapes: Reflecting on India at the 11th EASA conference

Abstract

The recent Commonwealth Games opening ceremony aimed to showcase the places and people of India to the world. The image it sought to project (of a united yet diverse place, where the past and the present sat comfortably together) was at odds with the image that Western-based media companies had projected in the weeks building up to the games. This latter vision was of India as a chaotic and wild place, where hygiene was questionable and planning imprecise. This is no surprise, for these elements of the modern Indian landscape often attract the Western gaze. This summer a group of academics came together at the annual meeting of European social anthropologists in an attempt to somewhat rectify the selective nature of this gaze through a presentation of different reflections on (and of ) landscapes of contemporary India. The group, which consisted of both Indian and Western academics, gathered together for two panels, connected by the workshop title ‘Indiascapes: reflections of contemporary India’.1 It was part of a larger academic conference, the 11th biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), which attracted over 1,100 academics. Most participants came from Europe but there were also delegates from Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America. The theme of the conference was ‘Crisis and Imagination’ and Professor Talal Asad gave the keynote speech. The conference was hosted by the National University of Ireland, Maynooth; the organising team included the local department of anthropology, EASA and NomadIT (a professional event organising team).