Unsettling Anthropology: Empire & Imperialism
The Social Anthropology Graduate Association invites you to Unsettling Anthropology: Empire and Imperialism featuring speaker Dr. David Gilmartin. He will speak on modern imperialism and the conflicted global history of environmental transformation.
In anthropology, we typically focus on the micro-dynamics of politics, and the categories of empire and imperialism are challenging for us. As anthropologists, we tend to locate and localize processes and concepts. Terms like ‘Europe’, ‘Islam’, ‘universalism’, ‘liberalism’, ‘sovereignty’, and ‘empire’ carry complex histories within anthropological thought. Our aim is to unsettle these concepts, while constantly revisiting the politics and ethics of conducting ethnographic inquiry on a global scale.
Date: Friday, February 7
Time: 4:00–6:00pm
Register: yorku.zoom.us/meeting
Event poster
David Gilmartin’s research interest focus on the intersections between the history of British imperialism in South Asia and the development of modern politics and forms of rule. His most recent book, Blood and Water: The Indus River Basin in Modern History (2015) examines the intersection between environmental and political history over the last 200 years. His current research focuses on the legal history of India’s electoral institutions as they have evolved from its colonial past, and on the ways these institutions have reflected evolving visions of sovereignty.
