51 – Intergenerational Innovation in South Asian Lifeworlds

October 3, 2025
3:45 pm
UGX61
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

Convenor

Jennifer D. Ortegren

Presentations

Skateboarding Beyond Youth: Intergenerational Ties and Cultural Innovation in South Asia
Sharma Leena - School for Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India
The Everyday as Innovative: Reconsidering Relationships Between Muslim and Hindu Women in India
Ortegren Jenn - Middlebury College, Middlebury College, Middlebury, United States
Intergenerational Bonding and Distancing among Indian Women: Changes in Mother-Daughter Relationships and Elderly Care
KANNO MISAKO - SCHOOL OF GLOBAL STUDIES AND COLLABORATION, AOYAMA-GAKUIN UNIVERSITY, TOKYO, Japan
Formations of feminist thalaimurai: intergenerationality, memory and care in Tamil political life
Hariharan Anusha - Global Interdisciplinary Studies Department, Villanova University, Villanova, United States
Gender, innovation, and the polycrisis: intergenerational differences in rural Rajasthan
Fiks Eva - School of Medicine, Keele University, Keele, United Kingdom
South Asian Women’s Innovations of Commercial Sites as Religious Spaces in Barcelona
Bachrach Emilia - Oberlin College, Oberlin College, Oberlin, United States
Generational Innovation among Tamil Hindu Ritual Drummers
Allocco Amy - Elon University, Elon University, Elon, United States
Parent-child negotiations in the shadow of compulsory marriage
ABRAHAM JANAKI - DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF DELHI, NEW DLEHI, India