11 – The Gender of Expertise in and beyond Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia
This panel intends to bring together scholars working on colonial and postcolonial South Asia to explore the ideas and activities of experts in the fields of development and welfare work with the adoption of gender as the main analytical lens. This approach enables us not only to foreground the expertise of women experts but also to investigate if and how gender assumptions and biases influenced the expertise of women and men and their interactions.
Keeping in mind this framework, the focus of this panel is on two thematic issues. The first one is the role of expertise in colonial and anti- and postcolonial national projects with an eye on the imperial, international and local discourses, concerns and agendas that fed into them. The second one is the scientisation of expert knowledge along with the exploration of the multidirectional flows of exchange of such knowledge for which experts were an important conduit. By focusing on these themes, the papers presented in this panel intend to 1) examine how did experts mobilise different social hierarchies in order to legitimise their authority and undermine their rivals; 2) explain how did the process of ‘scientisation’ impact upon different social groups that were targeted by the work of the experts, including women, labourers, low castes, children, ethnic minorities.
The panel builds on a growing body of literature on experts in South Asia which has yet to fully leverage the potential of gender as an analytical category and to adopt a transnational perspective.