03 – Moral Politics in South Asian Publics

This panel aims to explore the moral dimensions of public communication and politics in contemporary South Asia. The panel aims to bring together anthropological and humanities research that focuses on sources of the ethical self, moral contestations, and frictions experienced in practicing public communication in India and Pakistan in the languages Kashmiri, Hindi, Urdu and English. The panel will generate conceptual conversations to discuss three main points: first, the ways in which actors form ethical notions of themselves that allow for certain styles and habits of public communication; second, the moral protocols of public communication in both digital and other public spheres; and third, moralization that translates claims to hurt sentiments into public efficacy. Our panel aims to bring together scholars from the fields of media, literature, and religion to discuss the often-overlooked vernacular moral registers that are implicitly or explicitly present in public communication. These moral discourses and moral self-understandings, negotiated and textualized in vernacular South Asian languages, often have a different affective pull than the English registers. In this sense, we will specifically explore the relation between language, mediality, and morality in an interdisciplinary frame. The discussions generated aim to contribute to the scholarship on South Asian moral cultures and ethics.

Convenors

Max Kramer
- Sarbani Sharma -