Arafaat A. Valiani (Ph.D)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology Affiliated Faculty, Department of Asian Studies/International Studies Williams College
Ph.D. Columbia UniversityMA University of London (School Affiliations: School of Oriental and African Studies; London School of Economics)
Arafaat A. Valiani’s first book is entitled Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (2011, Palgrave). Click here or on book image for more information.
Arafaat Valiani's current book project is a comparative study of the relationship between urban infrastructure development and commerce in late colonial and postcolonial India and Pakistan. This inquiry traces the effects of urban planning discourses that circulated through Europe, the Middle East, Africa and east Asia and how they informed initiatives to create a system of urban roadways that would create avenues for commercial trade, entrepreneurship and consumption in two South Asian cities of industry and business, Ahmedabad (India) and Karachi (Pakistan).
Before taking up his appointment in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College, Arafaat Valiani earned his doctoral degree from Columbia University, Dissertation title: Formations of Dissent: Militancy and Violence in India. He also earned a Masters degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics.
Research and Publications:
- Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (2011). Click here to view a web cast of Prof. Valiani giving a Kluge Lecture, the Library of Congress (Washington D.C.) which draws from this work. (RealPlayer is needed to view the web cast, you may download it by clicking RealPlayer).
- Infrastructures of Commerce and Consumption in India and Pakistan (1940-1980). Current book project.
- ‘Physical Training, Ethical Discipline and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu
Nationalist Movement. Feb. 2010 issue of Cultural Anthropology (Vol.
25, Issue 1).
Transcript of an interview with Prof. Valiani related to this article, subject and the experience of being a participant observer within the Hindu nationalist movement available on the Supplemental Page. Click here to access the interview
- 'Political Identity and Violence in India' (2009). Essay pertaining to the terrorist attacks which took place in Mumbai, India in 2008. This contribution was solicited by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). It appears on the SSRC's blog entitled: 'off the cuff: Mumbai Revisited' (a column within one of the SSRC's main blogs entitled 'The Immanent Frame: Secularism, religion and the public sphere'. Click here to access off the cuff at the SSRC
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‘Modalities of Popular Mobilization: Communal Violence and Militancy in Colonial and Postcolonial Western India’. Under review.
- ‘Technologies of Consumption: Commercial Architecture and Urban Design in Karachi and Ahmedabad’. In Progress.
- ‘Violence’ (2007). Essay on the genealogy of the concept. It appears in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Click here to access an off-print of the essay.
- ‘The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China’ by Erik Mueggler, 2001. Anthropologica, Volume 45, No. 1, 2003, pp. 450-453 (Review).
- ‘Peace Parades the City?’, posted on www.indymedia.org in 2002.
- Kluge Fellowship, Kluge Center, Library of Congress
- Hellman Foundation Grant
- Adsit Fellow, Sabbatical leave fellowship from the Wilcox B and Harriet M. Adsit Professorship, Williams College
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend
- Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Research Grant
- American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellow (not utilized)
- National Science Foundation
- India Studies Fellow, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute
- Ford Foundation Pre-Dissertation Research Grant
- Junior Fellow, Center for Historical Social Sciences, Columbia University
Faculty Media Technologies Fellowship for Digital Archives of Violence: Maps, Newspapers, and Images, Faculty Center for Media Technologies, Williams College - Experiential Education Award, Williams College
- Critical Reasoning And Analytical Skills Award For Curricular Development, Williams College
- Teaching Fellowships (awarded twice), Columbia University
- Dissertation Fellow, Columbia University
- Southern Asian Institute Research Grant, Columbia University
- Fellowship Award for Exceptional Research in Environmental Studies, Concordia University (awarded twice)
- Violence
- Cultures of Political Protest in Modern South Asia
- Cities, Identity and Citizenship in Global Perspective
- Environmental Studies
- Urban Spaces of Modern South Asia
- Histories of National Revolutionaries, 'Terrorists' and Political Violence in Modern South Asia
- Methods of Historical Research
- Economic Practices in 20th India
- Social and Political Theory