Recent News - Department of Liberal Arts - SRM University-AP

The upcoming international conference, India & Southeast Asia in a Changing World: Convergences and Divergences, will examine India’s Act East policy, investigating its prospects and challenges in the Southeast Asian region. Assistant Professor Dr Vineeth Thomas from the Department of Liberal Arts has been selected for presenting a paper at this Conference organised by Christ University, Delhi NCR. He will present the paper titled The centrality of ASEAN in India’s Act East policy at the conference.

The international conference will be held In-Person from 14 to 15 October 2022 at the CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Delhi-NCR campus. The Hanns Seidel Foundation funds this conference. The major focus area of the conference is India’s foreign policy towards ASEAN countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore

Abstract

Against the backdrop of multi-dimensional developments and interventions in the Indo-Pacific region, India’s overseas policy and national security apprehensions have undergone substantial changes in the past few decades. Starting with the Look East Policy in the 1990s, India advanced its policy in 2014 as Act East Policy. The potential benefits of bilateral and multilateral relations in the Indo-pacific region made India take up its partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) seriously, which provided an opening and strip for India to explore Southeast Asia. This paper evaluates the significance of keeping ASEAN at the heart of India’s Act East Policy by illustrating the prospects and challenges in India-ASEAN relations.

The value of certain looks or appearances is constructed intentionally, and it directly takes part in social stratification. The explanation for this practice can be found in the concept of aesthetic labour. Aesthetic labour implies the practice of screening, managing, and controlling workers on the basis of their physical appearance. When read together with femininity and body, the concept discloses several crucial dimensions. Assistant Professor Dr Ipsita Pradhan, Department of Liberal Arts, published an article titled Aesthetic labour, Body, and Femininity: Insights from a Retail Shop-floor in the journal Sanghaditha. The paper is translated from English to Malayalam by Dr Anu Kuriakose.

Abstract

The essay discusses the importance of the body in interactive service work. By focusing on women retail shop floor workers, employed in the apparel and cosmetic sections of multi-national brands argues that employment in this sector requires working on one’s body to produce a “presentable” body by grooming so as to fit the larger image that the mall presents. The presence of the mannequin and its dressing is also analysed to understand how it perpetuates stereotypes of the ‘ideal’ body through the apparent function of attracting customers or giving the customers an idea of the products on display, simultaneously perpetuating the male gaze on ‘acceptable’ feminine bodies.

Post-truth represents the replacement of facts with personal beliefs and emotional appeals in order to shape public opinion. The distinction between fake and real news is not about reliable and unreliable sources. It’s about honesty and deception. The media can both inform and deceive people. What makes the news fake is the intention of its author. Discourses are produced by the effects of power within a social order. This power prescribes certain rules and categories that define the criteria for legitimating knowledge and truth within the discursive order. Assistant Professor Dr Ugen Bhutia of the Department of Liberal Arts published an article titled Beyond the discourse of Post-Truth: Some Reflection on the Idea of Fake News based on Corpus Linguistics in the Online Journal of Educational Policy and Management.

Abstract

The article illustrates how we deceive ourselves by attempting to understand fake news through the notion of a post-truth society. The paper argues that the concepts of fake news and post-truth are not an aberration in the history of media practices and neither of contemporary origins. They are an intricate part of the discursive practices in which media as an institution engages. The article builds on Foucault’s approach to discursive practices and applies a meta-discursive framework to trace the genealogy of post-truth and fake news in an Indian context. The article also critically reflects on some key strategies to contain and counter fake news. For instance, media literacy and linguistic approaches such as corpus linguistics to detect fake news.

Economic institutions, technological developments, cultural norms, religious and intellectual currents, and popular beliefs have always played a huge role in asserting clear boundaries between men’s and women’s work. The recent research paper of Assistant Professor Dr Ipsita Pradhan, Department of Liberal Arts, focuses on the transformation of gendered work in contemporary India. The paper is titled Women and the Changing Nature of Work in Hyderabad’s Hitec City and was published in the journal Sociological Bulletin.

Abstract

This article looks at the ways in which gendered work is being transformed in contemporary India by focussing on Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana. Since the mid-1990s, after India opened its doors to multinational agencies, new forms of gendered labour have manifested. One of the ramifications of this gendered process is the feminisation of labour that enabled the participation of more women in the workforce, engaging in activities that were low-paid. The basis of feminisation is that certain jobs require fewer skills or particular kinds of skills, for which women are thought to be suitable. This also has implications for the low bargaining power of women workers. The feminisation of the labour force in HITEC city, Hyderabad is a consequence of the changing labour markets with globalisation, offshore factories, migration, and other changes in the workplace.

Recently, Assistant Professor Dr Ipsita Pradhan from the Department of Liberal Arts has been selected for the IUS Field Training School and Research Seminar on Urban Ethnography and Theory in Tuscany, Italy. The seminar was held from July 18 to 26, 2022.

This eight-day Field Training School and Research Seminar is addressed to researchers, who are interested in ethnographic research and empirically grounded analysis. It is organised and hosted by the International Urban Symposium-IUS in collaboration with an international group of senior scholars from European, Indian, Middle Eastern, and US Universities. The school offers an interactive learning environment and opportunities to discuss the rationale and practices of research methods and mainstream debates. Participants will have the opportunity to present their own research and receive feedback from leading scholars. The Teaching Seminars will focus on methodological and theoretical debates, benefiting from senior scholars’ wide range of ethnographic, methodological, and theoretical expertise.