A CASI 30th Anniversary Workshop
Organized by Nafis Aziz Hasan (CASI) and Vijayanka Nair (San Diego State University)
June 28-29, 2022
Concept Note
For over three decades, digital technologies have been changing the form in which people interact with states across the globe. In India, the administrative domain of the state has been subject to many digital interventions, from the creation of an information database for the Planning Commission in 1970s with UNDP funds to a drastic shift in the delivery of public services with National e-governance plan (NeGP) in the 2000s. Beyond the domain of public services, digital technologies are also being adopted in many other domains of state work: for instance, security and surveillance (biometric borders), policing (police call centers), legislation (software programs to track cases), environments (databases for carbon offsetting, GIS mapping), health (mobile apps for tracking) and agriculture (ICT based agricultural extension).
This workshop aims to bring together scholars from diverse disciplines working at the intersection of digital technologies and multiple aspects of state work. In so doing, the workshop will also address the mutating identity of the state. It will provide a forum to think about how effects produced by the ubiquitous use of digital technologies contribute to or modify dominant theories of the state.
At one level, a change in the material form of states, calls for an investigation of emergent forms of everyday state—often communicative forms that characterize interaction between state agents and citizens. If media theorists have highlighted the return of old communicative forms, such as orality and visual symbols with the rise of digital technologies, how might these forms intersect with the dominant technologies of writing that characterize state work? How do they alter them? Alternately, how are dominant writing forms that constitute an archive of state work, remediated with digital media. In India, where a large number of people depend on the state for subsistence, these questions are doubly important.
At another level, we see many instances of the state in India embedded in the unfinished business of nation building, through shifting practices of identity formation, security and territoriality, reimaginings of law, and populism. How might digital media be playing a role in these functions that the state is enmeshed in? How might following the career of digital media in India tell us something about the nature and character of the contemporary nation-state? Conversely, what might the state's use of digital media for its multi-faceted functions suggest about the risks and effects of digital technology?
Participants
- Swapnil Rai | Assistant Professor | University of Michigan | swapnilr@umich.edu
- Rajesh Veeraraghavan | Assistant Professor | Georgetown University | rajesh.veera@georgetown.edu
- Apar Gupta | Executive Director | Internet Freedom Foundation | apar@internetfreedom.in
- Hemangini Gupta | Lecturer | University of Edinburgh | hemanginig@gmail.com
- Janaki Srinivasan | Associate Professor | IIIT-Bangalore | janaki.srinivasan@iiitb.ac.in
- Rahul Mukherji | Associate Professor | University of Pennsylvania | mrahul@sas.upenn.edu
- Vebhuti Duggal | Assistant Professor | Ambedkar University | vebhuti@aud.ac.in
- William Stafford | Postdoctoral Research Fellow | University of Toronto | wstafford.jr@berkeley.edu
- Vijayanka Nair | Assistant Professor | San Diego State University | vnair@sdsu.edu
- Nafis Aziz Hasan | Postdoctoral Research Fellow | CASI | nafish@sas.upenn.edu
Discussants
- Ashish Rajadhyaksha | Independent Scholar | ashish.rajadhyaksha@gmail.com
- Ayona Datta | Professor | University College London | a.datta@ucl.ac.uk
- Anuj Bhuwania | Professor | Jindal University | abhuwania@jgu.edu.in
CONFERENCE AGENDA
DAY 1: Tuesday, June 28
(All times in EST)
9:00-9:15am
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Vijayanka Nair & Nafis Hasan
PANEL 1: CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF STATE-MAKING IN DIGITAL INDIA
9:30-9:50am: Janaki Srinivasan, IIIT
9:50-10:10am: Hemangini Gupta, University of Edinburgh
10:10-10:30am: Swapnil Rai, University of Michigan
10:30-10:50am: Ayona Datta, University College London
10:50-11:20am: Q&A
PANEL 2: SOCIO-LEGAL DIMENSIONS OF STATE-MAKING IN DIGITAL INDIA
11:30-11:50am: Apar Gupta, Internet Freedom Foundation
11:50am-12:10pm: Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Georgetown University
12:10-12:30pm: Vijayanka Nair, San Diego State University
12:30-12:50pm: Anuj Bhuwania, Jindal University
12:50-1:20pm: Q&A
DAY 2: Wednesday, June 29
PANEL 3: COMMUNICATIVE DIMENSIONS OF STATE-MAKING IN DIGITAL INDIA
9:00-9:20am: Vebhuti Duggal, Ambedkar University
9:20-9:40am: William Stafford, University of Toronto
9:40-10:00am: Rahul Mukherji, University of Pennsylvania
10:00-10:20am: Nafis Hasan, CASI
10:20-10:40am: Ashish Rajadhyaksha
10:40-11:00am: Q&A
11:00-11:30am: Closing & Next Steps