Toboggan Lodge, Cornell University
Shelley Feldman (Professor, Development Sociology; Director, Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Cornell University
The project leading to the book Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the Making of Everyday Life, involved experts on the securitization of society and resulting insecurities in the U.S. and elsewhere. The book grew out of two Cornell workshops, a conference, and a reading group in the Society for the Humanities. These efforts, initially focusing on domestic forms of militarization of civilian life, expanded to encompass new forms of social and economic violence as dispossession, alienation, and the erosion of social reproduction became more dominant features of everyday life. The talk will focus on the relationship between security and insecurity in the contemporary moment andshare selected findings from the book collaboration.
Shelley Feldman is Professor of Development Sociology, Director of Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, a Cornell International Professor, and field member in Asia Studies, FGSS, ID, IARD, and CIPA. Employing a feminist comparative historical analytic she explores state formation and nationalist projects, social restructuring and rule, feminist analyses of class formation and religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh, and processes of social exclusion and governance. She also studies epistemic contestations in agricultural and rural policy formation. Among her publications are: Shame and Honour: The Violence of Gendered Norms under Conditions of Global Crisis; Social Development, Capabilities, and the Contradictions of (Capitalist) Development;Social Regulation in the Time of War: Constituting the Current Crisis; Bengali State and Nation Making: Partition and Displacement Revisited, and, with others, A Messy Confrontation of a Crisis in Agricultural Science.
Charles C. Geisler (PhD, Wisconsin, l979) is Professor of Development Sociology and a Cornell International Professor. His current research focus is the relationship between property and security in the current war on terror. Other interests include the militarization of land use planning; theories of the police power; development-induced displacement; new narratives of terra nullius; and post-property. These interests are reflected in his edited books: Indian SIA: The Social Impact Assessment of Rapid Resource Development on Native Peoples; Land Reform, American Style; The Social Consequences and Challenges of Changing Agricultural Technologies; A Community Land Trust Handbook, Property and Value, and Accumulating Insecurity. Other recent publications include work on social displacement, homelessness, indigenous property rights, and ownership in stateless places. He is a field member in International Development, IARD, AIP, and CIPA.
