Public Presentation by Dr Arunima Datta

February 24, 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Center for Korean Studies Auditorium Add to Calendar

"(RE) FIGURING SOUTH ASIAN COOLIE IDENTITIES: GENDER, LABOR MIGRATION AND THE EMPIRE" Recently literature has been flourishing on the “colonial” manipulations of intimate relations, morality and domestic arrangements in the making of the Empire. This body of scholarship remains limited by its preoccupation with relations between European men and native women, rendering some bodies and relations more relevant than others. Colonial construction of migrant Indian coolie households often depicts coolie women either as immoral beings or as passive victims of skewed native patriarchy, while coolie men have been figured as irresponsible and violent partners. Such sweeping depictions homogenized all coolie women into a single category of ‘victims’ and likewise all coolie men as perpetrators of violence against their wives or mistresses, thereby disregarding the plethora of relations and identities coolie men and women experienced. This talk explores such neglected intimacies of Indian coolie households in British Malaya. In doing so, it introduces the concept of “situational agency” and in the process contributes to ongoing discussions in fields of gender, migration and labour studies by problematizing the dichotomous understanding of “agent” and “victim” as mutually exclusive categories.

Dr Arunima Datta is a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National Univ of Singapore (NUS) See flyer


Event Sponsor
AsianStudies Program, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Tess, 956-6085, tconstan@hawaii.edu

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