The Center for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley welcomes Lawrence Cohen, Professor of Anthropology and South & Southeast Asian Studies, and member of the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley and UCSF, as its new Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies.
Trained in anthropology, medicine, and the history of religions at Harvard University, Cohen has been an innovator in the cultural analysis of Alzheimer's disease in India and, in turn, has influenced scholars working on the cultural understanding of health and disease in South Asia and elsewhere. His award winning book No Aging in India is about Alzheimer's disease, the body and the voice in time, and the debate over the past and future of the extended or "joint" family in South Asia.
He went on to write numerous articles on AIDS, gender, and sexuality in India, on topics ranging from debates over the culturally appropriate forms of AIDS prevention and treatment programs, to the contemporary politics of the Holi "gaali" [or comic abuse], to the ways that understandings of so-called "feudal" or "backward" places come to rely on complex and contested figures of sex and gender.
He has also written many articles on the controversies over the organization of organ transplantation in India and globally, linking local anxieties and hopes regarding the "kidney operation" in both north and south India to the varied ways that the "family planning operation" has come to inform histories of neighborhoods, families, and communities. More recently, his work on the politics of surgery has led him to current research on the history of cataract surgery in 19th-century Sindh and to the 19-century development in India of the "surgical camp."
Most recently, he has been writing and blogging on the ambitious Indian "Aadhaar" program to create a Universal Identification (UID) number and card for all residents of India, using biometrics and the promise of big data. This work has centered on what the architects of UID have termed the "de-duplication" of the population as a technical transformation of governance.
In his new role as Chair, Lawrence Cohen will work to advance CSAS’s research and educational mission within the field of South Asian studies, working with faculty colleagues across the University to promote conversation across problems, disciplines, and regions in a time certainly of budgetary challenges but also of pressing need for informed scholarship and powerful writing.
Cohen succeeds Raka Ray.
Read outgoing CSAS Chair, Raka Ray's reflections on her CSAS tenure and about how her tenure as CSAS Chair is remembered by CSAS friends & Faculty.
