The sixth seminar of the FAS Young Scholars’ Online Seminar Series 2024-25 will be presented by Brian T. Cannon, Lecturer, Critical Writing Program, University of Pennsylvania, on Friday, February 28, 2025 at 4.30 PM IST.

Brian’s study explores how regimes of land-keeping in early modern and colonial desert India engendered and sustained hierarchical social and economic relationships by controlling access to land, water, and other natural resources. Employing a host of descriptive and statistical material from Marwari, Hindi, and British colonial archives, it demonstrates how ownership of and access to sources of land and water persistently shaped claims to and contests over caste status over three long centuries. The work challenges the historiographical consensus that primarily views caste as a social phenomenon and argues for a materially-grounded perspective of caste.

The discussant for this session is Dr. Akhila Mathew, Assistant Professor of History, School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University.

The series is chaired by Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, the University of Oxford.

To attend the seminars, register here.

To see the schedule of other Seminars in this series click here.