Talk:Lisa Mitchell

By Anirudha patel

Lisa Mitchell is Chair and Professor of Anthropology and History in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as of August 2023. Her research interests include the multiple genealogies of democracy in India, public space and political protest in the history and everyday practice of Indian democracy, the street and the railway station as public space, the city and the built environment in South Asia, urban credit networks, and commodities in transnational history.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Anti Hindu/Hindutva Comments

Summary of article: Spaces of Collective Representation - Urban Growth, Democracy, and Political Inclusion

The author, Lisa Mitchell, claims that there is an increasing tendency among city planners and elected officials to limit spaces such as “Dharna Chowk in Hyderabad “ in their drive to transform their cities into global metropolises, particularly restricting spaces for politically engaged acts. The author also claims that the Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao's decision to relocate it, an authoritarian attempt to silence political opposition or for private investment purposes.

The author makes the following unsubstantiated claims:

1. No specific examples or detailed information is provided to expand on the claim that many cities are placing restrictions on the uses of public space, especially regarding political engagement. (but it does mention that data is taken from 11 capital cities across six continents, but no detailed case studies, statistical data, or concrete examples of these restrictions are provided.) -Check with Sir

2. The claim that political restrictions are specifically applied when people act as politically engaged citizens but not when they act as shoppers or employees on a lunch break- lacks concrete examples for substantiation.

3. The assertion that more and more elected officials and city planners envision transformations of their urban settlements into world-class cities is somewhat vague. The evidence for this claim remains unsubstantiated without explicit references or quoted statements from officials or planners.

4. The author makes a strong assumption that the restrictions on public spaces are going to grow even more, which isn't substantiated by any future predictions or trends data.

The article also lacks a strong thesis statement and insufficiently connects different concepts, such as John Parkinson's argument on the significance of physical public space and Judith Butler's perspective on public bodies.

Conclusion: The author provides a one-sided view of the impact of the decision to limit public space in the city.

Publications related to India

Books

1. Mitchell, Lisa. Hailing the State: Indian Democracy between Elections. Duke University Press, 2023.
2. Mitchell, Lisa. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009.

Journal Articles

1. Mitchell, Lisa. “The Railways and the City in the History of Indian Political Practice.” The City and the Railway in the World from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, edited by Ralf Roth and Paul van Heesvelde, Routledge, 2022, Chapter 10.
2. Mitchell, Lisa. “Other Places, Other Times: Brokerage in History and Practice.” Bombay Brokers, edited by Lisa Björkman, Duke University Press, 2021.
3. Mitchell, Lisa. “Whose Emotions? Boundaries and Boundary Markers in the Representation of Emotions.” South Asian History and Culture, special issue on “Emotions,” edited by Margrit Pernau, 2021.
4. Mitchell, Lisa. “Participatory and Adversarial Politics: Representing Speech Action, Collective Action and Emotion.” Emotions, Mobilisations, and South Asian Politics, edited by Amelie Blom and Stephanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, Routledge India, 2019, pp. 46-67.
5. Mitchell, Lisa, and Walter Hakala. “South Asia from c. 1750.” The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, edited by John Considine, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 388-413.
6. Mitchell, Lisa. “Language Regimes and Corporeal Practices of ‘Making Known’: Speech Action, Collective Assembly, and the Politics of Recognition in India.” Language and Communication, vol. 66, 2019, pp. 41-54.
7. Mitchell, Lisa. “Civility and Collective Action: Soft Speech, Loud Roars, and the Politics of Recognition.” Anthropological Theory, vol. 18, no. 2-3, 2018, pp. 217-247.
8. itchell, Lisa. “Spaces of Collective Representation: Urban Growth, Democracy, and Political Inclusion.” White Paper Series for World Urban Forum, University of Pennsylvania, 2018.
9. Mitchell, Lisa. “The Visual Turn in Political Anthropology and the Mediation of Political Practice in Contemporary India.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2014, pp. 515-540.
10. Mitchell, Lisa, translator. “Caste Domination Male Domination.” Steel Nibs are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing From South India, Dossier II: Kannada and Telugu, edited by K. Satyanarayana & Susie Tharu, Harper Collins India, 2013, pp. 704-709.
11. Mitchell, Lisa, and R.V.S. Sundaram, translators. “The Madman's Footprint.” Mango Bites, vaakali.com/patrika, 13 Feb. 2013.
12. Mitchell, Lisa. “‘To Stop Train Pull Chain’: Writing Histories of Contemporary Political Practice.” Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 48, no. 4, 2011, pp. 469-495.
13. Mitchell, Lisa. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Delhi, Permanent Black (South Asian edition), 2010.
14. Mitchell, Lisa. “Knowing the Deccan: Enquires, Points, and Poets in the Construction of Knowledge and Power in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern India.” The Madras School of Orientalism, edited by Thomas R. Trautmann, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 151-182.
15. Mitchell, Lisa. “Knowledge at the Edge of Empire: Experiencing Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge.” Fringes of Empire, edited by Elizabeth Kolsky & Sameetah Agha, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 236-256.
16. Mitchell, Lisa. “Making the Local Foreign: Shared Language and History in Southern India.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, vol. 16, no. 2, 2006, pp. 229-248.
17. Mitchell, Lisa. “Parallel Languages, Parallel Cultures: Language as the Foundation for the Reorganization of Knowledge and Practice in Nineteenth Century Southern India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 42, no. 4, 2005, pp. 445-467.
18. Mitchell, Lisa, Rama Sundari Mantena, and Bernard Bate. “Introduction: Language, Genre, and Historical Imagination in South India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 42, no. 4, 2005, pp. 443-444.
19. Mitchell, Lisa. “An Attachment to Language: Biographical Narratives and the Telugu Language in Late 19th Century Southern India.” Space, Sexuality and Postcolonial Cultures, edited by Manas Ray, ENRECA Occasional Papers Series, Calcutta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 2003, pp. 73-96.