Documentation as Political Practice: From Contemporary Nostalgia for the Left to the New Evidentiary Politics in 1970s South India
Lisa Mitchell, Professor of Anthropology & History, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Attend in person or via Zoom:
https://myumi.ch/W6drV
Five decades ago, the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union launched the Go to Villages Campaign, in which groups of university students were sent to rural Dalit settlements, where they were tasked with documenting the conditions of life and labor. In that same decade, anthropologists and sociologists like Clifford Geertz and Joseph Gusfield fundamentally transformed the social sciences by newly centering attention to writing. This talk asks why Telugu South India similarly saw the emergence of new socio-political writing and documentation practices in the 1970s, highlighting four examples: the Jana Natya Mandali’s (People’s Theatre Troupe) new documentary song-story compositions; AP State Harijan Conference reports; documentation produced by the RSU’s “Go to Villages Campaign”; and the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee’s introduction of regular “fact-finding missions.”
Lisa Mitchell is professor of anthropology & history in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Hailing the State: Indian Democracy between Elections (Duke University Press 2023; Permanent Black 2023) and Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Indiana University Press 2009; Permanent Black 2010), which received the Edward Cameron Dimock Prize in the Indian Humanities. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright, European Research Council, American Institute for Indian Studies, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. In 2020 she was a recipient of the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
This lecture is the keynote address of the CSAS 2025 Graduate Student Conference “New Directions in South Asia: From Nostalgia to New Politics.”
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at tinagrif@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Five decades ago, the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union launched the Go to Villages Campaign, in which groups of university students were sent to rural Dalit settlements, where they were tasked with documenting the conditions of life and labor. In that same decade, anthropologists and sociologists like Clifford Geertz and Joseph Gusfield fundamentally transformed the social sciences by newly centering attention to writing. This talk asks why Telugu South India similarly saw the emergence of new socio-political writing and documentation practices in the 1970s, highlighting four examples: the Jana Natya Mandali’s (People’s Theatre Troupe) new documentary song-story compositions; AP State Harijan Conference reports; documentation produced by the RSU’s “Go to Villages Campaign”; and the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee’s introduction of regular “fact-finding missions.”
Lisa Mitchell is professor of anthropology & history in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Hailing the State: Indian Democracy between Elections (Duke University Press 2023; Permanent Black 2023) and Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Indiana University Press 2009; Permanent Black 2010), which received the Edward Cameron Dimock Prize in the Indian Humanities. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright, European Research Council, American Institute for Indian Studies, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. In 2020 she was a recipient of the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
This lecture is the keynote address of the CSAS 2025 Graduate Student Conference “New Directions in South Asia: From Nostalgia to New Politics.”
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at tinagrif@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
| Building: | Tisch Hall |
|---|---|
| Website: | |
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Asian Languages And Cultures, Center For South Asian Studies, India, Politics, Sociology |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Center for South Asian Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures |
