16/01/2025 (Thursday) 13:00-14:00 E21B-G002
Converging patterns, diverging scales? Comparing and connecting late-colonial and postcolonial Goa (India) and Macau (China)
Abstract:
This paper outlines a thematic and analytical basis for comparing the late-colonial and postcolonial experience of Goa and Macau, two former Portuguese enclaves and present-day leisure destinations in India and China respectively. United by their history of occupation by the same European power, by their importance to lucrative trade routes in the 16th and 17th centuries, and by a decline in their economic significance in the centuries of (quasi-)colonization that followed, these territories today occupy curiously analogous positions in the nation-states that incorporated them. The paper draws on the disciplines of history, cultural geography and critical political economy to conceptualize their evolving roles and shared characteristics in “spatial divisions of labor” (Massey 1984). The justification for comparing Goa and Macau is not limited to the fact that such research has not yet been undertaken. The paper aims to demonstrate that juxtaposing these two seemingly marginal locations can yield a better understanding of still-unfolding “colonial aftermaths” (Stoler 2013). Such comparisons can, moreover, shed clearer light on the fortunes of localities that are, prima facie, assigned cognate functions within societies that are, however divergently, capitalist. An empirical study of the history and present of Goa and Macau has the potential, in turn, to inform longer-term comparative inquiries into the ways in which India and China have experimented with the praxis of democracy, decentralization, and development. Principally conceptual, this paper synthesizes existing scholarship in order to build a scaffolding for future research that compares Goa with Macau, and India with China, in a broader Global Asia framework.
Bio:
Dr. Prakruti Ramesh is currently Shuimu Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University. She received her PhD in Global Studies from Aarhus University, Denmark, with a focus on qualitative social sciences. Her recent publications have appeared in the journals ‘Third Text’ and ‘History and Anthropology’.
