Workshop : Alternative Life Projects in Rural South Asia, 28th to 30th October
28 OCTOBRE 24
Alternative Life projects in Rural South Asia: Reflecting on post-development through a study of diverse emplaced collectives
This workshop is part of a long-term project entitled "Alternative life projects in rural South & Southeast Asia: Reflecting on post-development through a study of diverse emplaced collectives" (AltLife-SSEA), initiated at the École française d'Extrême Orient (Paris) by a team of researchers from EFEO, the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (Bangkok), the French Institute of Pondicherry, and UMR Passages (Bordeaux).The aim of this three-day workshop in Pondicherry is to bring together representatives of alternative collectives in rural areas, in order to share their experience with researchers on the issues and objectives of this research project.
Positioning and theoretical objectives
All over the world, rising social inequalities, and a disenchantment with Western modernity have been prompting experiments in alternative ways of living. Climate change and the necessary "environmental transition" have only made such projects more urgent, as post-development theorists have shown (Escobar 1995; Esteva 1992). The aim of this workshop is to capture this debate and to present alternative living projects that have taken shape in rural areas of South and South-East Asia and that share both a critical stance towards established development and an aspiration for a meaningful existence. With Mario Blaser, we conceive of life projects as "oriented to the sustenance of emplaced collectives", that is, "heterogeneous assemblages" of human and non-human entities that "take place in a specific location" and are related by mutual obligations (Blaser 2019: 84, 86).
By looking at alternative life projects of a broad spectrum of collectives, taking into account the constraints each of them faces, we seek to elaborate on the distinction between "alternatives to development" and "alternative development" that was so vividly formulated by Arturo Escobar (1995: 215). Rather than trying to categorize life projects as either radically rejecting the entire paradigm of development — operating a clear-cut "post-"development — or working within this paradigm, we consider the collectives under study as expressing a range of critical engagements with dominant development.
Workshop is open to all but registration is required to facilitate organisation.
Maria Chauveau : mariamelchauveau [at] gmail.com
Xavier Guillot : xavier.guillot [at] bordeaux.archi.fr
ateliers
This workshop is part of a long-term project entitled "Alternative life projects in rural South & Southeast Asia: Reflecting on post-development through a study of diverse emplaced collectives" (AltLife-SSEA), initiated at the École française d'Extrême Orient (Paris) by a team of researchers from EFEO, the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (Bangkok), the French Institute of Pondicherry, and UMR Passages (Bordeaux).The aim of this three-day workshop in Pondicherry is to bring together representatives of alternative collectives in rural areas, in order to share their experience with researchers on the issues and objectives of this research project.
Positioning and theoretical objectives
All over the world, rising social inequalities, and a disenchantment with Western modernity have been prompting experiments in alternative ways of living. Climate change and the necessary "environmental transition" have only made such projects more urgent, as post-development theorists have shown (Escobar 1995; Esteva 1992). The aim of this workshop is to capture this debate and to present alternative living projects that have taken shape in rural areas of South and South-East Asia and that share both a critical stance towards established development and an aspiration for a meaningful existence. With Mario Blaser, we conceive of life projects as "oriented to the sustenance of emplaced collectives", that is, "heterogeneous assemblages" of human and non-human entities that "take place in a specific location" and are related by mutual obligations (Blaser 2019: 84, 86).
By looking at alternative life projects of a broad spectrum of collectives, taking into account the constraints each of them faces, we seek to elaborate on the distinction between "alternatives to development" and "alternative development" that was so vividly formulated by Arturo Escobar (1995: 215). Rather than trying to categorize life projects as either radically rejecting the entire paradigm of development — operating a clear-cut "post-"development — or working within this paradigm, we consider the collectives under study as expressing a range of critical engagements with dominant development.
ateliers