Forschungsseminar: Negotiating 'Minorities' in South and Southeast Asia in Transregional Perspective (WiSe 2020/21)

This is a co-taught research-based course (Forschungsseminar) combines interdisciplinary, transregional and intersectional perspectives in the examination of ‘minorities’ South Asia and Southeast Asia.

This course examines the transition from colonialism to post-colonial nation states in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines). It maps the shifting trajectories of minorities across time and traces the discursive, political and legal making and negotiation of ‘minorities’ in (post)colonial South Asia.

The course considers the making and negotiation of ‘minorities’ in the context of borders, (forced) migration, nation-building and state-making with regard to questions of ‘citizenship’ and issues of belonging. This includes scrutinizing/reflecting upon how ’minorities’ are created on the one hand and how ‘minority status’ is negotiated, instrumentalized, contested and unmade on the other hand by a variety of stakeholders (including diverse state actors, civil society within a given community, transnational diasporas and international actors as part of geopolitics as well as international ‘humanitarian’ multi-level processes). Furthermore, it examines the cases of different categorizations of ‘minorities’ and their prevalence across a variety of political system contexts. The course attempts to provide historically grounded, situated context-sensitive, intersectional analyses of the creation and persistence of ‘minority (political) subjectivities’. Themes include: colonialism and the ethnographic state; (post-)colonial nation building and minority making; (Forced) Migration; (Diasporic) Activisms.

 The course is a co-teaching collaboration between Sadia Bajwa and PD. Dr. Andrea Fleschenberg. Classes are composed of 8 synchronous joint sessions for both course groups working on either South or Southeast Asia.  These are spread over the semester. Each session is 3hrs  (9:00-12:00) long is composed of two components:

• Joint (South and Southeast Asia) discussions of theoretical, methodological and empirical key readings and transregional perspectives on key themes and issues

• Separate discussions focusing on South or South East Asian case studies and aspects thereof