Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard (Hybrid)
Date and Time
Location
"The Social Psychology of Lynchings in Majoritarian India"
Speaker:
Vatsal Naresh, Lecturer in Social Studies, Harvard University.
Moderator:
Nicole West Bassoff, PhD Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Contact:
Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu
Cosponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Attendance Information:
- Please register online to attend this event in person at CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Thomas Chan-Soo Kang Room (S050). A light lunch is provided for those that register by 1:00pm on the Thursday before the event.
- Please sign up to attend this event via Zoom
Abstract:
Targeted atrocities against Muslims and Dalits have risen in contemporary India since the BJP's victory in 2014. Rather than explaining the occurrence of this violence, I examine its consequences for the consolidation of 'majoritarian domination'. I argue that majoritarian domination is best understood as avoidable exercise of insufficiently controlled governmental power that compromises a minority’s basic interests. I describe the importance of violence in the reproduction of majoritarian domination through the example of Reconstruction America. I turn to lynchings in 2015-18 and 2023-4 to present a novel account of the causes and consequences of targeted atrocities in the mediatized landscape of electoral politics.
Bio:
Vatsal is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. His research interests span democratic theory, political violence, realism, and constitutionalism in 19th and 20th century South Asian, Afro-modern, and European political thought. Vatsal's book project, Democracy’s Violence, presents a new theory of majoritarian domination through an interpretation of Alexis de Tocqueville, W. E. B. Du Bois, B. R. Ambedkar, and Hannah Arendt’s writings on majorities, identities, and collective violence. Recent publications include co-edited volumes on Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism: India, Pakistan, and Turkey (Oxford UP 2021) and Constituent Assemblies (Cambridge UP 2018) and a forthcoming article in the American Political Science Review.