Bangladesh 2024: Protest, Politics, Possibilities
Nusrat Chowdhury
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College
Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow
Susan Ostermann
Assistant Professor of Global Affairs, Keough School of Global Affairs
Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow
The July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh has been deemed unprecedented because of its success in deposing a leader whose grip on power seemed unshakable. Angry students steered the opposition who turned their dissatisfaction with a court decision about government job allocation into a one-point demand for the resignation of the prime minister. In a matter of weeks, and in the face of excessive state violence, droves of ordinary citizens came out on the streets and joined the protests. While the speed and manner in which the events unfolded is unprecedented, the student as political agent has a longer history in the political culture of the region. Based on conversations with student activists and leaders, this talk will situate the 2024 uprising within this larger context while identifying the shifts in the performative, aesthetic, and linguistic aspects of the July protests that aimed to draw a sharp line with the past.
Cosponsored with the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies
Nusrat Chowdhury
Political anthropologist Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury is associate professor of anthropology at Amherst College. Her research and writing focus on the affective and aesthetic dimensions of postcolonial democracies, especially in the context of popular sovereignty and political communication. Her first book, Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh (2019), is an ethnography of the crowd...