40 – Temporal Orders of Household: Past and Present

October 3, 2025

8:30 am

H15

Households in early modern and modern South Asia, either as physical sites or imperial microcosms or as sites of production and reproduction, have usually been treated in relation to power, sovereignty, kingship, domesticity, and patronage. They have largely been pitched in the debates on the contested and changing meanings of the public and the private. Taking this as the point of departure, the panel proposes to shift the usual focus of household in existing historiography and explore how the social construction and experience of time are linked to the changing organization, rhythms, and dynamics of households. Usually, the effects of public institutions on households (including temporality) are assumed rather than historicized. We invite contributions to test these assumptions and also detail how households have alloted, organized, and managed time and how these temporal orders have informed patterns and practices of social, cultural, and economic life. We are therefore interested in foregrounding the interconnectedness of time, space, and social organization within the household across historical periods and cultural contexts. We specifically invite contributions that seek to understand how temporal orders within households have shaped and also been influenced by factors such as market institutions (credit and debt), practices of mobilities (marriage, travel, migration), work (paid and care work), customs and rituals (agrarian cycles, rhythms of auspiciousness), and technological changes (electrification, kitchen gadgets, energy use, piped water supply, and sewage disposal). We further propose that a temporal lens could prove productive to rethink the caste and gendered histories of household and domesticity. Contributions including these concerns and approaches are particularly welcome.

Convenor

Nitin Sinha

Presentations

‘Home’ as a Site of Accumulation of Capital: A Gendered Understanding of Home-based Work in the Global Circuits of Capital

M Madhuvadhani - South Asian University, South Asian University, New Delhi, India

Keeping time at home: Understanding the domestic space in late 19th-early 20th century Calcutta through the mechanical time device

Kar Sagnik - LEIBNIZ-ZENTRUM MODERNER ORIENT, GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITÄT GÖTTINGEN, BERLIN, Germany

Mughal Objects, Temporal Order and Material Practices of Household in Early Modern India (16th-18th century)

Chattopadhyay Amrita - Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Leibniz Association, Berlin, Germany

Paid Domestic Work and Temporal organisation of Households in the late 19th and early 20th century Eastern India.

Varma Nitin - Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, ZMO, Berlin, Germany