Emerging Worlds - Ethnographic Explorations of New South-South Connections
‘Emerging Worlds’ is a collective research program aimed at exploring the yet unfolding South-South connections between Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The ‘Emerging Worlds’ research program embarks upon a collective enquiry into the yet unfolding, and accelerated 21st century phenomenon of south-south connections between Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The Global South is now increasingly being shaped up through South-led investments, development aid and migration in search of opportunities and livelihood within the South.
Through grounded ethnographies in a number of locations within Asia and Africa, the project seeks to rethink the idea of the Global South and the ways in which it presents itself as a political-economic force in the 21st century.
Ravinder Kaur: head of Emerging Worlds
Kaur works across the disciplines of history, anthropology and international politics. She is currently engaged in two long-term research projects. The first focuses on post-reform India’s transition into an attractive ‘emerging market’ in the global political economy, and second, explores the yet unfolding connections between Asia and Africa via a study of new business connections between India, China and Ghana.
Contact associate professor Ravinder Kaur.
Rune Christopher Dragsdal: Indian Pulses in Africa
This project is a fieldwork-based exploration of Indian entrepreneurs engaged in the lease of land for growing pulses and Indian traders engaged in the trade of pulses in Mozambique and Ethiopia. The aim of the project is to understand the emerging South-South connections being created through pulses. Ethnographic fieldwork will take place for 10 months among all those who are involved in the production and trade of pulses: Indian investors, traders and technical staff working at farms, local farm workers, local smallholder farmers, government officials, politicians and relevant organizations. The project will follow the pulses, in all senses of the word.
Contact PhD fellow Rune Christopher Dragsdahl.
Bani Gill: South-South Mobilities: An ethnographic exploration of African migrants in contemporary Delhi
Extensive focus on South-North movements in migration literature has tended to obfuscate how half the world’s migration occurs between developing countries located in the global South (OECD 2013). India is a quintessential case study in this regard, as a traditionally recognized ‘immigrant sending’ country that has also continued to host a large population of ‘foreigners’, migrants and asylum seekers within its territory.
It is in this context that the present PhD project aims to explore the unfolding trend of migration within the Global South by focusing on migration from the Africa continent to India. Through grounded ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi city – where a significant migrant population from different parts of Africa has settled in the past decade – the project seeks to show how livelihood strategies, opportunities and asylum are increasingly being sought in Southern locations, and how racial tensions, xenophobic discourses, and everyday conflicts shape this new South-South interaction.
Using global ethnography as an approach, this PhD research contributes to literature on immigrant integration in countries of the South, and the often paradoxical conditions of this engagement. If these conflicts and controversies allow us to move beyond the decolonization movement, they also augur the future of South-South connections in the 21st century.
Contact PhD fellow Bani Gill.
Jean Comaroff
Professor of African and African American Studies and Anthropology and Oppenheimer Research Fellow, Harvard University
John Comaroff
Professor of African and African-American Studies and Anthropology, and Oppenheimer Research Scholar, at Harvard University
Prasenjit Duara
Raffles Professor of Humanities at the National University of Singapore where he is also Director of Asian Research Institute and Research in Humanities and Social Sciences.
David Theo Goldberg
Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the University of California system-wide research facility for the human sciences and theoretical research in the arts.
Achille Mbembe
Research Professor in History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Varun Sahni
Professor in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Chairperson, Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD).
Barbara Weinstein
Professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at New York University. Her research interests include race, gender, labour, and political economy, especially in relation to the making of modern Brazil.
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaur, Ravinder | Professor | +4553633421 |
Funding
The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Project period: 2014-2019
PI: Head of centre Ravinder Kaur
Contact
We are always interested in working with committed researchers with interest and expertise in South-South connections, connected histories of Asia-Africa and intra-Asia. Please get in touch if you wish to get involved.
Global development
See the UCPH Global Development portal.