Constructing the Ocean – Indian Ocean Infrastructures and Thick Transregionalism of Dawoodi Bohras
MIAU Friday Seminar with Thomas Fibiger (Study of Religion/Arab and Islamic Studies) and Uwe Skoda (Global Studies). School of Culture and Society
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Nobelparken Room 1451-515 + https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/69955306696
Scholarship on Indian Ocean migration studies is mushrooming these years, and so are the tropes of transregionalism and infrastructure in academic studies. This presentation introduces a collective research project dealing with these issues, focusing on connections and imaginaries across four different locations across the Western Indian Ocean, and more specifically taking the Muslim Ismaili minority community of Dawoodi Bohras as case in point. The four locations are Mumbai (the main contemporary centre of the community), Tanzania, Dubai and Cairo (the latter where the community traces its historical and ideological origins and are again active). The project consists primarily of ethnographic fieldwork in these four sites, with some archival historical research as well. The project team includes Uwe Skoda (PI, Global Studies, AU), Thomas Fibiger (co-PI, Study of Religion, AU), Isha Dubey (postdoctoral scholar and assistant professor at IIIT Hyderabad), Cecil Pallesen (postdoctoral scholar and curator at KØN Gender Museum Aarhus) and Mattias Gori Olesen (postdoctoral scholar, Study of Religion and Arab and Islamic Studies, AU). The project in particular focuses on ‘construction’ and ‘infrastructure’ as both physical building projects (such as mosques, schools, universities and community residences, and with a new Mumbai highrise as point of departure) as well as metaphorical, analytical concepts to study the connections and imaginaries of being ‘one community’ across the Indian Ocean (and global) space.