Megan Moodie: The Promise of Protection, 1875-1919: Notes towards a transnational history of India's reservation policy

Building on the research she conducted for her forthcoming book, We Were Adivasis: Aspiration in an Indian Scheduled Tribe (University of Chicago Press, South Asia Across the Disciplines Series, May 2015), this talk attempts to bring together several disparate historical genealogies to propose a new understanding of India's affirmative action policy, one that tracks its transnational links to discussions about protection and representation in other regions, particularly the new Balkan states, from the 1870s on. Of special interest will be the unexpected conversations that may have informed colonial debate about, on one hand, the reservation/scheduling of "areas" and tribal groups for protection and, on the other, the problem of minority representation in independent India.
Professor Moodie studies the sociality engendered by legal and economic projects for uplift and empowerment, including affirmative action, microfinance, and gender-based rights assertions. Her in-progress book, based on ethnographic work with the Dhanka, examines the gendered impact of affirmative action-based upward mobility.