The Center for Public Affairs and Critical Theory (C-PACT) at Shiv Nadar University invites you to a virtual Public Lecture on ‘Trivializing Intimacy, Objectifying Entwinement: Rethinking Water, Land and ‘Culture’ in Bangladesh’ by Professor Swadhin Sen, Department of Archaeology, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. The lecture will be held on March 1, 2021 at 5.30 PM IST.
Abstract
Bangladesh is axiomatically known as the land of rivers and the land of floods and disasters. Yet, despite the intimate association of human lifeways and water-river, little is known of the pre-modern/pre-colonial perceptions and practices of managing environment, floods and rivers. Most projects about water have been ‘present’ centric even though they have aimed at solving the problems of the past. Through this lecture, I shall highlight the need for transgressing the binary of nature and culture and interrogate the taken-for-granted narratives of disaster management. I shall emphasize the archaeological understanding of water and river through case studies from various ecozones of Bangladesh, and focus upon the ways in which we can devise conceptual and methodological tools for exploring the relational aspects of landscape and waterscape. Considering that human actions, perceptions, emotions and embodied experiences are inseparable, we need to historicize intimacy and the living in our searches of past notions and praxis of water. It is only then we can begin to see the myriad complexities that nurture the relationships between land, water and culture. (Photograph: Kirtonkhola by Firoz Ahmed)
About the Speaker:
Dr. Swadhin Sen is a Professor of Archaeology at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. He builds upon methodologies of Social Anthropology for enquiring into the geoarchaeology and field archaeology of rivers and water, and also specializes in palaeoecology, heritage studies and the archaeologies of religion and ritual.