South Asian Capitalism(s)

This conference is the second in a sequence of events co-organized by two public universities: the University of California Berkeley and University of Massachusetts, Amherst on the theme of the political economy of South Asia. Titled South Asian Capitalism(s), this Fall 2025 conference aims to investigate how capitalist accumulation is socially structured across South Asia.

A G E N D A

Fri, Sept 12, 2025
9:15 AM	Registration
9:45 AM	Opening Remarks
10 AM	Panel I: Informality and Capitalism Discussant: Pranab Bardhan	Speakers: Alessandra Mezzadri Dina Siddiqi Barbara Harriss-White
11:30 AM	Panel II: Agriculture production and circulation Discussant: Sharad Chari	Speakers: Noaman Ali Tariq Omar Ali
1 PM	Lunch
1:45 PM	Early Career Scholars’ Panel 1 Discussant: Sai Balakrishnan	Speakers: Abdulla Niruvan Chalil: Waqf as a “Non-Charitable” Dedication in the Shariat Application Act: Making of Muslim Personal Laws and Market Ordering in South Asia Taniya Silvapulle: Market Liberalization and the Tale of Two Trajectories: An Ethnography on Urban Upper-Middle-Class Families in Sri Lanka
2:45 PM	Coffee
3 PM	Early Career Scholars’ Panel 2 Discussants: Matthew Shutzer, Patrick Heller	Speakers: Mushahid Hussain: Democracy without Hegemony? Class Formation and Party Politics in the Aftermath of the Bangladesh’s Monsoon Uprising Sampurna Das: Capitalism’s Kinship Fix: Traditional Authority and Rentier Logics in Northeastern India’s River Islands
4 PM	Break
5 PM	Keynote:Capitalism & Majoritarianism Katharina Pistor Thomas Blom Hansen
Sat, Sept 13, 2025
9:30 AM	Registration
10 AM	Keynote: Gail Omvedt at Berkeley and Beyond: Caste & Democracy Patrick Heller Sumeet Mhaskar Aarti Sethi
11:30 AM	Coffee
11:45 AM	Early Career Scholars’ Panel 3 Discussant: Vamsi Vakulabharanam	Speakers: Mishal Khan: Managing Capital’s Disruptions in the Sindhi Countryside Abhishek Dwivedi: Between Consent and Coercion: A Continuum of Unfree Labour in Kanpur’s Leather Industry
12:45 PM	Lunch
1:45 PM	Early Career Scholars’ Panel 4 Discussants: Zachary Lamb, Thomas Blom Hansen, Sumeet Mhaskar	Speakers: Roshini Chattopadhyay: Customs in the flux of Capital: Santhal’s Manjhi-Haram and Resource Governance in West Bengal, India Zahid Ali: Accumulation by Wastelanding: Postcolonial Dispossession and the Political Economy of Land in South Asia
3 PM	Break
3:15 PM	Panel III: Caste and Class Discussant: Anirban Gupta Nigam	Speakers: Layli Uddin Vamsi Vakulabharanam

S P O N S O R S

Department of City and Regional Planning (UC Berkeley), Institute for South Asia Studies (UC Berkeley), The Center on Contemporary India (UC Berkeley), Global Metropolitan Studies (UC Berkeley), Asian Political Economy Program (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), The South Asian Political Economies Initiative, CRG - Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative (PCRes), Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI)

A G E N D A

Fri, Sept 12, 2025

Sat, Sept 13, 2025

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