240514 SE Ethnicity, territories and trans-border connections (with a special focus on India) (P3) (2022S)

Aims of the course
1. With a specific regional focus on Northeast India and the eastern Indian Himalayas, this lecture-seminar will allow deepening knowledge and understanding of the academic literature focusing on:
- The academic discussion challenging the concept of ethnicity as an exclusive product of modern nation-states (Gupta and Fergusson 1992; van Schendel 2002; Scott 2009; Corey et. al. 2011);
- Identities across borders in India (Chatterjee 2013; Gohain 2020; Shneiderman 2015);
- Political borders and identity bordering in India (Aggarwal 2004; Middleton 2013).
2. To improve the techniques of oral and written presentations and of integration of the literature studied.
3. To actively participate in group discussions.

Content
This course focuses on the relation between borders, defined preliminarily as state’s territorial demarcations, and the construction of ethnic identities. Since the 1990s, the idea that collective identities were deterritorialised as a result of globalisation challenged the concept of ethnicity as an exclusive product of modern nation states. Since then, a number of researches based on ethnographic fieldwork complexified this view, and shown that, rather than having disappeared, borders have moved from border lines to border-points located everywhere, and are best understood as performance, ‘bordering’ and places where multiple forms of regulation are combined.
In the Indian context – where the central role of state policies and ethnic classifications in the elaboration and reification of ethnic boundaries has been for long demonstrated – the view of national borders as the primary factors in shaping ethnic identity is now challenged. A large place will be given to cases study from northeast India, which is surrounded by international borders; in this context, the research highlighted the central role of transborder flows and networks in the construction of present-day communities and society. However, instead of advocating the loss of influence of state territorialisation on identity formation, it also shows how state bordering and transnational networks combine in the construction of ethnic boundaries. This concerns not only communities separated by a border (national or international) but also those drawing resources (material and knowledge) from transborder networks.

Teaching method
Oral presentation of one or two texts in the reading list during the seminar (the number of text presentations will depend on the number of students); group discussion on the texts in the class (preparation of questions in small groups); final written essay focusing on a specific aspect of the academic discussion on the topic of the seminar. The students will submit their final essays online (Moodle) before the end of the semester.
The assessment will be based on:
- Individual or paired oral presentation during the course of at least one of the texts in the reading list (article or book chapter).
- Active participation to group discussions.
- Individual final essay.