WHEN: Friday, 4 October 2024, 12pm - 1.30pm (BST) / 4.30pm - 6pm (IST)

WHERE: Online (MS Teams)

Seminar speaker:

Simanti Dasgupta is a professor of Anthropology and the chairperson of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at the University of Dayton. Her overarching interest lies in the politics of citizenship and belonging in postcolonial and neoliberal nation-states. She previously authored BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water and Neoliberal Governance in India (Temple University Press, 2015), which examined the emerging neoliberal politics in urban India at the intersection of Information Technology and water privatization. She can be reached at sdasgupta1@udayton.edu.

Abstract:

Based on ethnographic work with Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in Sonagachi, the iconic red-light district in Kolkata, Prophylactic Rights examines the emergence of labour rights at the intersection of HIV/AIDS and anti-trafficking. The primary disciplinary contribution of this book lies in bridging medical and legal anthropology through a corporeal understanding of sex work rights. It addresses the following questions: How does the labour rights narrative emerge through everyday negotiations with an epidemic and the law and what congeries of history, public health policies, legal regimes, and techniques of subjection and subversion impede and impel the labour movement? The book will fill a gap in existing research by investigating what it means to be a sex worker in Sonagachi struggling for labour rights based on their lived experiences and bring focus to their struggles for rights and acknowledgement as equal members of society.

The Laws of Social Reproduction project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (under grant agreement No. 772946).

For more information about the project, please email Prabha.kotiswaran@kcl.ac.uk.