University of Sussex
Browse
Arora2014-GatheringsMobilityForSPRUwebsite.pdf (228.38 kB)

Gatherings of mobility and immobility: itinerant “criminal tribes” and their containment by the Salvation Army in colonial South India

Download (228.38 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 17:01 authored by Saurabh AroraSaurabh Arora
In retelling the history of “criminal tribe” settlements managed by the Salvation Army in Madras Presidency (colonial India) from 1911, I argue that neither the mobility–immobility relationship nor the compositional heterogeneity of (im)mobility practices can be adequately captured by relational dialecticism espoused by leading mobilities scholars. Rather than emerging as an opposition through dialectics, the relationship between (relative) mobility and containment may be characterized by overlapping hybridity and difference. This differential hybridity becomes apparent in two ways if mobility and containment are viewed as immanent gatherings of humans and nonhumans. First, the same entities may participate in gatherings of mobility and of containment, while producing different effects in each gathering. Here, nonhumans enter a gathering, and constitute (im)mobility practices, as actors that make history irreducibly differently from other actors that they may be entangled with. Second, modern technologies and amodern “institutions” may be indiscriminately drawn together in all gatherings.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Transfers

ISSN

2045-4813

Publisher

Berghahn Journals

Issue

1

Volume

4

Page range

8-26

Department affiliated with

  • SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2014-04-11

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2014-04-11

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2014-04-10

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC