|
PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research), Mumbai: PUKAR is an innovative and experimental non-profit institution that takes Mumbai as its conceptual base and laboratory and aims to contribute to a global debate about urbanization and globalization. Its goal is to do so through generating new urban knowledge and by encouraging maximum participation of Mumbai's citizens in this process, thus contributing also to Mumbai's dynamism and sustainability. Its Associates are a group of young scholars, social and cultural activists and professionals in the fields of art, journalism, film, architecture, urban planning concerned with globalization and urbanism, working out of their base in Mumbai, India. The group was founded by Appadurai in 2001 and directed by him until Feb. 2003 when he became the President of its Board and its executive head. PUKAR initiates debates and dialogue among various civil society and academic institutions on the cultural effects of globalization on various aspects of social life in Mumbai. PUKAR also organizes a number of seminars, workshops, talks and film screenings in both English and Marathi and focuses specifically on producing a new space for critical engagement, especially aimed at the younger resident-citizens of the megalopolis. PUKAR's organizational structure, with two directors based in Mumbai and New York respectively, experiments with an innovative transnational structure which allows PUKAR to tap into transnational circuits of scholarship and activism in creative ways and to bring the specific concerns of Mumbai to these global circulations. PUKAR receives funding from a number of foundations, based both in India and elsewhere. It has also received funding from UNESCO. PUKAR Link: http://www.pukar.org.in/ ING (Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization): is a nine-year old network involving academic institutions in seven countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and scholars in the disciplines of anthropology, political science, philosophy and history. Appadurai was one of the founders of this network in 1995, along with anthropologists Peter Geschiere, Peter van der veer and Ulf Hannerz and presently serves as its Co-Director along with Professor Peter Geschiere of the University of Amsterdam. The network has been organizing meetings at its core member institutions annually with the goal of "globalizing the study of globalization." The network is based on the premise that in the long run, our ability to do significant research on globalization depends on our sensitivity to its cultural dimensions as they are seen in different parts of the world as well as on the existence of viable national and international contexts for doing this research. The network is a unique experiment in building the capacities for such a conversation across unevenly funded research contexts by building strong and democratic research partnerships between northern and southern institutions. Since 1995, the Network's major activity has been to organize an annual conference on a particular theme of relevance to the organizing partner institution and its local audiences and adding international, interdisciplinary perspectives to that conversation on topics including: globalization and the construction of communal identities; globalization, cities and youth; the reproduction of inequalities in the globalized periphery; and the state under attack. More recently, the Network has committed itself to organizing an annual Summer School on Globalization to cultivate and strengthen links to the younger generation of scholars. The current working plan of the Network is to develop, in addition to the annual Summer School, a series of thematic working groups, consisting of 10-12 scholars who are network members, which will be convened and 'curated' by one or more members of the network. (ING Website under construction) PUBLIC CULTURE: is a renowned journal founded by Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge and published triannually by Duke Univerity Press. Public Culture seeks a critical understanding of the global cultural flows and the cultural forms of the public sphere which define the late twentieth century. Public Culture Link: |
|
|