Centre For Critical Research And Social Change       

In India contemporary research on critical events and social change is carried out within two broad fields of enquiry. The first ranges from the humanities and social sciences to technology, while the second is the province of non-governmental social actors, following agendas that have usually been set in advance. The methods introduced by academics and NGOs now appear in the toolbox of any contemporary researcher, but scant attention is paid to new modes of data collection and interpretation. Consequently, processes such as the symbiotic relation of the global circulation of values and desires to local networks and institutions, the impact of commodities in the intimate lives of individuals, the power of collective violence to forge new solidarities, the way gender relations are constituted in the face of these processes have been either ignored or placed within conventional schools of thought. Seldom do we find an attempt to re-think contemporary problems and issues in a way that departs from the Holy Grail of disciplinary research. The Centre for Critical Research and Social Change (CCRSC) aims to provide a fresh perspective to arenas of contemporary life in a way that forces us to re-think the culturally regnant paradigms of social life. Drawing on the expertise of academics, film-makers and performers, the Centre will function both as a resource house and a data-gathering unit especially for those interested in a critical analysis of the application of various policies, NGOs, researchers and filmmakers. An important aim is to establish a virtual library that can be accessed by concerned individuals.

The Centre has a set of well-defined projects that its members are currently pursuing and it will consolidate on these areas of research. Broadly, the Centre has identified three main arenas of enquiry:

• Mapping a social and sexual topography of commodities and bodies in dispersed localities of Mumbai and Delhi. The libidinal relationship between commodities and bodies forces us to conceptualize ideas of masculinity, material culture and the production of a ‘footpath’ literature with the intent to show that urban publics are constituted not merely through rational operations, but also in the interface of sexualized commodities and commodified sexualities.
  
  
• Documenting and analyzing communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai. Such violence though extensively documented, is characterized by a series of significant silences. This particular project shows that men, both as perpetrators and recipients of violence, are able to use the discourse of the riot to make claims to the state for compensation and rehabilitation. From another perspective the project explores how communal riots lead to the formation of a working class that derives its solidarity not from common conditions of work but in a shared culture of honour and valour.
  
  
• Exploring the urban-rural interface in the city of Delhi, particularly in the face of the forced relocation of various small-scale industries. Conventional wisdom has it that there is an ineluctable movement from rural to urban areas. This project explores the way in which the urban is folded into the rural. Starting from the margins of the city, the project develops a visual biography of working class men as they are displaced to villages, the impact of an urbanized style of life that they carry with them and their attempts to unravel the insularities of rural living. Consequently, contrasting ideas of masculinity are juxtaposed with the way women carry its burden.