Fourth Critical Studies Conference on Development, Logistics, and Governance

[8-10 September,Kolkata,India]

CRG along with collaborators has worked in the past on themes related to autonomy, rights, popular ideas of social justice, and transformations in the mode of governance in the postcolonial era. These themes and lines of inquiry have reached a stage where we need to discuss in a frame of historical sociology the main way/s in which our societies are being transformed by logistical operations in governance, the particular post-colonial nature of this logistical transformation, and the role that various forms of mobility and flows play in shaping logistical governance in post-colonial milieu. It seems to us that the notion of logistics will give this proposed conference on the dynamics of developmental governance the ballast to map out and navigate this landscape of flows, governmental responses, and the massive transportation and communication-centric network emerging in the process. Logistics is here conceived as a grid of responses to certain social challenges that the task of governing a society faces – challenges that can be briefly described as challenges of security, population movements, and territorial flux in the internal organisation of the State. Such a conference calls for an inter-disciplinary approach in a broad historical overview, which can account for the great changes in logistical management of the Indian and other societies.

The conference proposes to be an occasion for exchanges on studies on logistical
governance. We invite panels / papers on related themes such as:
• The logistics of population mobilisation, control, management, and the phenomenon
of transit labour
• Developmental logistics
• Logistics of elections
• The development of border roads
• Disaster Management
• Impact of military administration on civilian governance
• Control regimes of mobile diseases
• The economy of logistics

The last date for sending proposals and abstracts is 31 March 2011, and the last date for receiving papers will be 31 July 2011. Please send proposals or abstracts to suhit@mcrg.ac.in CRG will have no fund for travel assistance to participants. However it will provide accommodation for 3 nights. The registration fee for the conference will be Rs. 500 (Five hundred rupees) only.