The Call to Islam and Early Warning Systems: The Art of Overhearing in Bangladesh

Dr. Naveeda Khan will be coming to UNC-CH to deliver the following paper in an open format for the Chapel Hill community:

The Call to Islam and Early Warning Systems: The Art of Overhearing in Bangladesh

This paper uses the natural disaster warning systems in place in Bangladesh as a springboard for considering how poor people, specifically those living on shifting islands or chars in the River Jamuna, receive and assess information from centers of expertise and authority. The mode of “overhearing” emerges as the most productive means of anticipating and materializing threats and promises, ranging from floods to relief. At the same time these very channels of communication bring in other sounds and messages from diverse domains of life, including the political and the theological. These suggest a highly elaborated art of overhearing or listening in on infrastructure.

Naveeda Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins. Her previous work was on religious difference and everyday sociality in Pakistan. She wrote Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan (2012) and edited Beyond Crisis: Re-evaluating Pakistan (2010). Her recent work is on riverine life in the context of climate change in Bangladesh.

This event is sponsored by the Islamicate Graduate Student Association (IGSA), UNC Student Government, Graduate and Professional Student Federation, Carolina Seminar on Transnational and Modern Global History, Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, Department of Asian Studies