SynTalk

Do you (only) like people like you? Is belonging ‘necessary’? Are communities homogeneous? How do communities become political actors from being social entities? Are community identities a way of becoming legible for the State? Does the idea of nations pre-suppose the idea of communities? Conversely, how do countries or communities fall apart? Are societies modern, & communities pre-modern? Can communities self-determine themselves as such? How much can communities scale? How is the community enacted, & what keeps it going? Are they all kept together by (filial) feelings? What is the interplay between blood, language, religion, ‘culture’, trade, and subsequent social formations? ‘Where’ are self-interested strangers civil to each other? Is the State natural to human beings? Does language make us human? Are (all) individuals, therefore, social? Are all women a community? &, call centre employees? Do you want to be on the winning side? Are utopias scary? What happens when we turn within? Will communities persist in the future? Or, is the future unhomely and infinitely lonely? Would there be new modalities of drawing connections? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from political theory (Prof. Neera Chandhoke, ex-University of Delhi, Delhi), anthropology (Dr. Mathangi Krishnamurthy, IIT Madras, Chennai), & history (Prof. Gyan Prakash, Princeton University, Princeton). Listen in...