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Papers by Sayantan Saha Roy
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2024
What are the potentialities and limits of nonviolence as a method of resistance against modern bi... more What are the potentialities and limits of nonviolence as a method of resistance against modern biopolitics? This article offers an ethnographic account of Irom Sharmila's sixteen-year-long hunger strike against the continued state of emergency in the Indian state of Manipur. It interrogates how she envisioned the protest, the objectives that she set, and how her protest came to an end. This article demonstrates that her protest was not about a will to death, as it has often been described, but instead was based on a radical distribution of responsibility among the people suffering under the regime of violence. Her nonviolent protest as a Gandhian practice was directed particularly at the entailments of violence. In challenging the state but refusing to emulate it, she became an exemplar. She became the one who could not be killed even by the state with exceptional powers. Finally, by contrasting her protest with Manipuri nationalism, this article shows how the ethics of nonviolence offers a unique vision for peace and liberation.
American Ethnologist, 2023
The state of exception is classically understood as a situation devoid of laws and marked by the ... more The state of exception is classically understood as a situation devoid of laws and marked by the sovereign's absolute powers. This picture is unsettled by offering a more tenuous account of the state of siege, showing that normal laws and processes can be a constitutive dimension of modern exceptional regimes. Through an ethnography of a permanent space of exception in India, I argue that emergency regimes as forms of structural injustice are marked by affective intensities and anger directed against state power. Irom Sharmila's 16-year hunger strike in the state of Manipur was one such affective act that challenged state authority. The police mitigated this challenge through the minutia of rules and processes targeting the protester's body. The state's legal response to the hunger strike showed that emergency powers are better understood not by the sovereign's fantasy of absolutism but as the messy affective mediation of the normal and exceptional.
Feminist Anthropology, 2023
The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on... more The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on the one hand and the right to bodily autonomy on the other. The supposed personhood of the fetus is widely invoked to restrict the right to abortion. In India however, one sees a paradoxical situation. Not only is there wide legal access to abortion, but this also exists simultaneously with an active legal imperative to protect the female fetus. How did the Indian state allow access to abortion while protecting a unique fetus? This paper argues that the question of reproduction and abortion in India is intimately tied to imaginations of national futures and risks and reproductive bodies have been entangled in those futures. The discourse around the legalization of abortion and the criminalization of sex-selection offered differing but stark visions of national endangerment which played a critical role in authorizing different state actions targeting reproductive bodies while sustaining this paradox. This paper expands the anthropological understanding of the different grounds of abortion debates globally.
Book Reviews by Sayantan Saha Roy
In Toxic Disruptions: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Urban India, medical anthropologist Gauri Path... more In Toxic Disruptions: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Urban India, medical anthropologist Gauri Pathak offers an empirically grounded and theoretically informed account of the rise in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in India. Through detailed interviews primarily with middle class women and doctors in Mumbai, the book traces how the condition is tied to the prevalence of endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) in the environment, a phenomenon which she traces back to the social, economic, and dietary changes which have been ushered in by India's 30-year-long experiment with economic liberalization. The book offers a structured and compelling account of the ways in which PCOS in India is tied to changing gender norms and the evolving aspirations of the Indian middle class, while attending to the ways in which the condition poses risk to women who are negotiating it through a series of novel strategies in India's ever changing healthcare landscape. PCOS is primarily a gynecological and endocrinal condition. It can impact the regularity of the menstrual cycle and can cause reduced fertility. Its symptoms also include obesity, cystic acne, hirsutism, hair loss, and increased risk of type II diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. Studies of PCOS have shown that its rates among women in India can be twice the global average. Urban Indians face high and prolonged exposure to EDCs in the environment which has been linked to PCOS. Such EDCs are commonly found on everyday objects like credit cards, plastic packaging, fertilizers, mattresses that humans are regularly in contact with. Though the actual rates of prevalence of EDCs is hard to determine, the book looks at the increased rates of PCOS diagnosis as an outcome of toxic environments created by India's liberalization experiment which has encouraged rapid growth in harmful chemical producing sectors. The book draws on the literature on science studies and medical anthropology, to understand the possibility of inhabiting a world structured by toxicity. Pathak begins the book by interrogating how her interlocutors understand the causes behind their diagnosis. Her interlocuters agree that lifestyle changes ushered in by India's economic liberalization are the primary cause for the rise in PCOS. Pathak uses the term "disruptive modernization" to describe India's relentless push to modernize and the unsettlement of the "natural" cycle of life that it causes. A growing Indian economy has expanded the opportunities for middle class women to play a greater role in India's work force. But gender norms have remained intransigent, and women are expected to fulfill the traditional role of the wife, mother, and daughter. Pathak's interlocutors argue that this leads to greater pressure on them manifesting in the form stress. Furthermore, the extractive capitalist system has disrupted sleep and dietary cycles of women in the work force. Pathak's research shows an awareness
The Truth Machines, in Jinee Lokaneeta's eponymous book, refer to the new forensic techniques in ... more The Truth Machines, in Jinee Lokaneeta's eponymous book, refer to the new forensic techniques in India's criminal justice system. These techniques promise to make truth finding and police investigations more objective, and revolutionize the criminal justice system in India. Its defenders proclaim that these techniques can make a system riddled with torture, arbitrariness, and violence more humane, rational, and systematic. Lokaneeta, in a remarkable work of scholarship, offers a disquieting picture of these new objects to show that old prejudices continue to thrive, and these techniques are a new arsenal in the perpetual injustices of India's policing system. Her key contention is that the modern Indian state ought not to be viewed as a monolith which has centralized violence; rather its operation is much more tenuous and contingent, and it is only through everyday negotiations among competing actors that the effect of a coherent and powerful state emerges.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2024
What are the potentialities and limits of nonviolence as a method of resistance against modern bi... more What are the potentialities and limits of nonviolence as a method of resistance against modern biopolitics? This article offers an ethnographic account of Irom Sharmila's sixteen-year-long hunger strike against the continued state of emergency in the Indian state of Manipur. It interrogates how she envisioned the protest, the objectives that she set, and how her protest came to an end. This article demonstrates that her protest was not about a will to death, as it has often been described, but instead was based on a radical distribution of responsibility among the people suffering under the regime of violence. Her nonviolent protest as a Gandhian practice was directed particularly at the entailments of violence. In challenging the state but refusing to emulate it, she became an exemplar. She became the one who could not be killed even by the state with exceptional powers. Finally, by contrasting her protest with Manipuri nationalism, this article shows how the ethics of nonviolence offers a unique vision for peace and liberation.
American Ethnologist, 2023
The state of exception is classically understood as a situation devoid of laws and marked by the ... more The state of exception is classically understood as a situation devoid of laws and marked by the sovereign's absolute powers. This picture is unsettled by offering a more tenuous account of the state of siege, showing that normal laws and processes can be a constitutive dimension of modern exceptional regimes. Through an ethnography of a permanent space of exception in India, I argue that emergency regimes as forms of structural injustice are marked by affective intensities and anger directed against state power. Irom Sharmila's 16-year hunger strike in the state of Manipur was one such affective act that challenged state authority. The police mitigated this challenge through the minutia of rules and processes targeting the protester's body. The state's legal response to the hunger strike showed that emergency powers are better understood not by the sovereign's fantasy of absolutism but as the messy affective mediation of the normal and exceptional.
Feminist Anthropology, 2023
The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on... more The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on the one hand and the right to bodily autonomy on the other. The supposed personhood of the fetus is widely invoked to restrict the right to abortion. In India however, one sees a paradoxical situation. Not only is there wide legal access to abortion, but this also exists simultaneously with an active legal imperative to protect the female fetus. How did the Indian state allow access to abortion while protecting a unique fetus? This paper argues that the question of reproduction and abortion in India is intimately tied to imaginations of national futures and risks and reproductive bodies have been entangled in those futures. The discourse around the legalization of abortion and the criminalization of sex-selection offered differing but stark visions of national endangerment which played a critical role in authorizing different state actions targeting reproductive bodies while sustaining this paradox. This paper expands the anthropological understanding of the different grounds of abortion debates globally.
In Toxic Disruptions: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Urban India, medical anthropologist Gauri Path... more In Toxic Disruptions: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Urban India, medical anthropologist Gauri Pathak offers an empirically grounded and theoretically informed account of the rise in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in India. Through detailed interviews primarily with middle class women and doctors in Mumbai, the book traces how the condition is tied to the prevalence of endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) in the environment, a phenomenon which she traces back to the social, economic, and dietary changes which have been ushered in by India's 30-year-long experiment with economic liberalization. The book offers a structured and compelling account of the ways in which PCOS in India is tied to changing gender norms and the evolving aspirations of the Indian middle class, while attending to the ways in which the condition poses risk to women who are negotiating it through a series of novel strategies in India's ever changing healthcare landscape. PCOS is primarily a gynecological and endocrinal condition. It can impact the regularity of the menstrual cycle and can cause reduced fertility. Its symptoms also include obesity, cystic acne, hirsutism, hair loss, and increased risk of type II diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. Studies of PCOS have shown that its rates among women in India can be twice the global average. Urban Indians face high and prolonged exposure to EDCs in the environment which has been linked to PCOS. Such EDCs are commonly found on everyday objects like credit cards, plastic packaging, fertilizers, mattresses that humans are regularly in contact with. Though the actual rates of prevalence of EDCs is hard to determine, the book looks at the increased rates of PCOS diagnosis as an outcome of toxic environments created by India's liberalization experiment which has encouraged rapid growth in harmful chemical producing sectors. The book draws on the literature on science studies and medical anthropology, to understand the possibility of inhabiting a world structured by toxicity. Pathak begins the book by interrogating how her interlocutors understand the causes behind their diagnosis. Her interlocuters agree that lifestyle changes ushered in by India's economic liberalization are the primary cause for the rise in PCOS. Pathak uses the term "disruptive modernization" to describe India's relentless push to modernize and the unsettlement of the "natural" cycle of life that it causes. A growing Indian economy has expanded the opportunities for middle class women to play a greater role in India's work force. But gender norms have remained intransigent, and women are expected to fulfill the traditional role of the wife, mother, and daughter. Pathak's interlocutors argue that this leads to greater pressure on them manifesting in the form stress. Furthermore, the extractive capitalist system has disrupted sleep and dietary cycles of women in the work force. Pathak's research shows an awareness
The Truth Machines, in Jinee Lokaneeta's eponymous book, refer to the new forensic techniques in ... more The Truth Machines, in Jinee Lokaneeta's eponymous book, refer to the new forensic techniques in India's criminal justice system. These techniques promise to make truth finding and police investigations more objective, and revolutionize the criminal justice system in India. Its defenders proclaim that these techniques can make a system riddled with torture, arbitrariness, and violence more humane, rational, and systematic. Lokaneeta, in a remarkable work of scholarship, offers a disquieting picture of these new objects to show that old prejudices continue to thrive, and these techniques are a new arsenal in the perpetual injustices of India's policing system. Her key contention is that the modern Indian state ought not to be viewed as a monolith which has centralized violence; rather its operation is much more tenuous and contingent, and it is only through everyday negotiations among competing actors that the effect of a coherent and powerful state emerges.