Arjun Appadurai To Speak At Muhlenberg
Arjun Appadurai, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Professor in the Social Sciences at The New School, will speak as part of Muhlenberg College’s Globalization From Above and Below series on September 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Miller Forum, Moyer Hall.Monday, September 10, 2007 01:59 PM
The lecture, “Cosmopolitanism from Below: Some Ethical Lessons From the Slums of Mumbai,” is free and open to the public.
In this lecture, Appadurai will examine the ways in which the men and women who compose an alliance of activist slum-dwellers in Mumbai construct practices of cosmopolitanism that do not rely on universalism, high literacy or an expansive universalism. Rather, their cosmopolitan tactics risk standard cultural identities to form new political bonds and push against the limitations of poverty to construct new horizons of ethical solidarity. These practices reach out to the world not by presuming a prior humanity but by constructing credible communicative strategies that link localities, both in Mumbai and around the world.
Born in Bombay, Appadurai is a socio-cultural anthropologist with specializations in modernity and globalization. Aside from holding academic appointments at Yale, Chicago and Pennsylvania, he has also served as a consultant or advisor to a wide range of public and private organizations, including many major foundations (Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller); UNESCO; UNDP; WIDER (World Institute for Development Economics Research); the World Bank; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Science Foundation.
He is the author of Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minnesota, 1996) and his latest book, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Duke, 2006), in which he turns his attention to the complex dynamics fueling large-scale, culturally motivated violence, from the genocides that racked Eastern Europe, Rwanda and India in the early 1990s to the contemporary “war on terror.”
Preceding the lecture, Appadurai will attend an author reception at 4:30 p.m. in the College’s Trexler Library. He will give students and faculty a chance tospeak with him one-on-one, purchase copies of his books and have the books signed. Appadurai will offer to the group some brief comments on his most recent book. Refreshments will be served. This event is also free and open to the public.
For more information on the College’s Center for Ethics, or to view the schedule of events for the fall semester, please visit: www.muhlenberg.edu/cultural/ethics.
Muhlenberg College gratefully acknowledges the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation’s support of the Center for Ethics.
