SAC presents: Shelly Feldman

Shelly Feldman on Making Difference as a Social Project: State, Law, and Land Relations in Contemporary Bangladesh

Shelly Feldman, Professor, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University 

Justifying religious difference as a threat to national security, the enactment of the Vested Property Act marks Bangladeshi Hindus as citizens whose allegiance to the country is always and already suspect. This paper explores the social production of Hindu difference through legal claims to the right to private property to show how land rights and the control of private property, embedded in historical, social, political, and cultural relations, shape the security of people and their subjectivity. 

Open to the Public

Sponsored by the Department of Geography, Sociology and Religion and the South Asia Center at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs