Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East

Abstract: First regulated as gambling, even as similar practices abroad were formalized in private exchanges and consolidated in boards of trade, vernacular futures trading in India foregrounds speculation as a problem of law and…

Abstract: Economic theory and technocratic policy have long understood economic action to be a communicative activity. From Pierre-Simon Laplace and Adam Smith to current liberalization fiscal policy in India designed to produce …

Abstract: The export processing or free trade zones that have been built since the 1960s across Central America and the Caribbean, north Africa and the Gulf states, and South and Southeast Asia have emerged as uniquely charged ob…

Abstract: This essay engages with the commodification of land in an urban periphery of India. It argues against the tendency to reduce commodification of land to “primitive accumulation” or “accumulation by dispossession.” It pre…

Abstract: In this essay, I focus on what has been characterized as a perennial problem for the Hindi film industry — the inability to accurately measure commercial outcome. While commentators and industry personnel criticize and …

Abstract: In this article I focus on prediction in an Indian gambling market. The article is based on my long-term fieldwork at Delhi Racecourse, which offered a microcosm in which to examine speculations on future uncertainty. I…

Abstract: Capitalism, normally considered the zenith of scientism, techno-rationality, and calculative reason, can fruitfully be seen as just the opposite of these things. It can be considered the dreamwork of industrial modernit…

Abstract: In May 2014, the editors of CSSAAME hosted a discussion with the Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander about artistic practice and its role in deconstructing (and reframing) the often vexed relationship Eurocentric…

Abstract: This article investigates miniature painter Shahzia Sikander’s work in animation. It begins by providing background on Sikander’s earlier animation work since 2001 and by exploring the use of sound, image, and digital t…