51 – Intergenerational Innovation in South Asian Lifeworlds
In her analysis of aging as it relates to Indian families, anthropologist Sarah Lamb (2006) critiques the assumption that young people are the “only or primary site where globalization inserts itself into culture and society,” while older people are taken to be “quintessentially representative of ‘tradition.’” She argues instead for recognizing how elders construct, participate, and innovate in globalizing contexts as a way of understanding global modernity. This panel takes Lamb’s insight as a point of departure, extending it to consider the ways in which emerging shifts within and between generations of South Asian families and communities push us to reconsider how we identify innovations in cultures, practices, and identity formations. Building on studies that focus on the enormous and diverse youth population (Chakraborty 2016; Jeffrey 2010; Lukose 2009) of South Asians globally, this panel attends not only to the progress of and novel approaches to worldmaking enacted by younger generations, but also to the innovative work initiated and continued among older ones. Considering these dynamics in tandem will help us to analyze a wide range of South Asian cultural practices and identity formations, including potential new and changing contexts related to caste and class, interreligious relationships, migration and transnational communities, gender roles, the economy, technology, politics, community-building projects, and the arts, among others. Together, we want to ask not just what generations can learn from each other, but also how they may—or may not—be learning from one another in productive new ways
