AR 2009-10 - Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

ought out by Centre for Advanced Study, Shimla and Routledge. Theanthology is expected to be published towards the end of 2010. The editingthe second edition of Nibandha Baichitrer Teen Dashak to be published byCharchapada, Kolkata, in January 2011. Dwaipayan Bhattacharyyacoordinated DFID / ESRC funded academic project “Embedding PoorPeople’s Voices in Local Governance”. Two workshops of the project havetaken place in Trivandrum and Kolkata. The final report will be submitted byMarch 2011. Partha Chatterjee is continuing his research on a bookmanuscript entitled The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practiceof Power which is expected to be completed by June 2010. RosinkaChaudhuri is continuing her research project on nineteenth-century Bengalipoetry. A final chapter on Rangalal Bandyopadhyay is in the process ofbeing written, to be followed by the Introduction, after which the project willbe ready for submission. She is also in the process of compiling six orseven essays, some of which were published in journals such Interventions,Modern Asian Studies, Social Text and Journal of Asian Studies along withtwo unpublished papers and an introduction, for publication in book form.Anirban Das now plan to finish and submit for publication a number ofarticles. Some of these are part of his thesis while others are new pieces onrelated themes. These articles are i)”Embodied Knowledges: An IntimateCritique of Positional Objectivity and Standpoint”;ii)”The Spectrality ofIdeology: Ethical Imports of Eating Well” and iii)”Unhinging the State andthe Nation: (Im)Possibilities”. Mollica Dastider is working on her projectFrom Caste to Tribe: The Nepali Speaking Communities in East Himalayas.Her research inquiry engages with the construction and deconstruction of‘caste’ Nepali culture in Darjeeling, Sikkim and East Nepal. The commoncultural geography and her linguistic mapping of the region largely indicatethe assertion of the subordinate castes and subaltern janajatis widelyreferred as Matwali jat in the Nepali linguistic parleys. In addition tounderstanding the construction and deconstruction of the caste Nepaliculture in Sikkim and Darjeeling the study intends to look at the developmentof Limbu script and language, tracing its evolution since the publication ofthe first Limbu script in 1855 by Dr. Archibald Campbell. Limbu languagewritten in Srijanga lipi , other than empowering the marginalized to writeabout themselves in their own native language, offers a socialanthropological explanation of the proximity of spoken Limbu to Chineseand its written version to the early forms of Brahmi lipi. Anjan Ghosh isworking on three main areas, some of which is nearing completion: i) Rumourand Communal Conflict in Bengal, 1946-1992. The plans are to completethe book manuscript on this theme in the forthcoming months; ii) DurgaPuja in contemporary Kolkata. The plans are to collate already publishedarticles and existing writings on this theme, and add some material on thechanging notion and nature of the para (neighbourhood) in the city; iii) Historyof Sociology and Social Anthropology in India, with a special interest in thetraditions of teaching, writing and research in these disciplines, and theirdevelopment both within and outside the universities. He is writing a paperon the theme, “The Shrinking of the Social”, which is being developed outof a presentation that was made at a seminar on “Modernity, Identity andResistance in South Asia” at the Department of Sociology, University ofMumbai, in March 2010. Two other completed papers on this theme, titled“Public Culture of Sociology in Calcutta” and “Local Scholars: GlobalAcademy” are awaiting publication in two edited volumes of essays. PriyaSangameswaran is working on a project on Discourses of Water andDevelopment and Sector Reforms in Water in Maharashtra. The aim of thisproject is to understand different processes involved in the sector reformsin water, how they are shaped by the interaction between hegemonicdiscourses of water and development and the motivations of diverse actors,and how these changes link to larger debates about neoliberal development,rights, equity and commodification of resources. As the last part of the project,work is currently on going on a book tentatively titled (Re) formingdevelopment through water reforms. She currently has rough drafts of fourof the seven proposed chaptersNEW PROJECTSEconomicsSaibal Kar is working on two new projects i) Risk Sharing in the InformalEnterprises and ii) Migration and Human Capital Formation in DevelopingCountries. Indrajit Mallick started a book project on “Financial SystemDynamics and Prudential Regulation” to understand Economic Dynamics.Sugata Marjit is now working on four projects: (i) Global Crisis, LocalBubbles and the Indian Economy, (ii) Obama’s Anti-outsourcing Policy,Implications for US and India, (iii) Credit Crunch and Outsourcing and (iv)Corporate Governance and Stock Market Behavior.HistoryGautam Bhadra was busy with administrative duties in the last six months8 9