Kira Huju, "Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Kira Huju, "Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Kira Huju narrates the birth, everyday life, and fracturing of a Western-dominated global order from its margins. It offers a critical sociological examination of the elite Indian Foreign Service and its members, many of whom were present at the founding of this order. Dr. Huju explores how these diplomats set out to remake the service in the name of a radically anti-colonial global subaltern, but often ended up seeking status within its hierarchies through social mimicry of its most powerful actors. This is a book about the struggles of belonging: it revisits what it takes to be a recognized member of international society and asks what the experience of historically marginalised actors inside the diplomatic club can tell us about the evident woes of global order today. In interrogating how Indian diplomats learned to live under a Westernised world order, it also offers a sociologically grounded reading of what might happen in spaces like India as the world transitions past Western domination. An awkward balancing act animates the order-making of India's cosmopolitan diplomats: despite a genuine desire to strive toward a postcolonial world founded on diversity, difference, and the symbolic representation of a global subaltern, there is a strong sense of a lingering caricature-like notion of a white, European-dominated homogenous club, to which Indian diplomats feel a deep-rooted and colonially embedded desire to belong. Cosmopolitanism operates inside this balancing act not as an international ethic upholding an equal, tolerant, or liberal global order, but rather as an elite aesthetic which presumes cultural compliance, diplomatic accommodation, and social assimilation into Western mores. Based on 85 interviews with Indian diplomats, politicians, and foreign policy experts, as well as archival work in New Delhi, the book asks what the experience of historically marginalised actors inside the diplomatic club tells us about the social hierarchies of race, class, religion, gender, and caste under global order. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

In his recent book, The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz (University of Chicago Press, 2011), J. Hillis Miller sets outs to address Theodor Adorno’s famous proclamation t...

23 Elo 20121h 33min

Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

As the last of what Wendy Steiner refers to as “a loose trilogy” with her earlier works, The Scandal of Pleasure (1995) and Venus in Exile (2001), The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art (...

16 Heinä 201256min

Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011)

Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011)

Pipes matter. That’s right: pipes. Anyone who has spent time in Russia knows that the hulkish cylinders that snake throughout its cities are the lifeblood of urban space, linking apartment block after...

20 Kesä 20121h 17min

Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview. For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing visibility of LGBTQ people in North American society,...

14 Helmi 20121h 19min

Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of social life. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Cr...

26 Tammi 201255min

Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human: A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer” (Penguin, 2011)

Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human: A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer” (Penguin, 2011)

Can computers think? That was the question which provoked English mathematician Alan Turing to come up with what we call the Turing Test, in which a computer engages a human in conversation while a ju...

23 Touko 201149min

Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)

Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)

I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by that time a rock-star intellectual and darling of the American student movement. Upon seeing the man, he exclaimed “Marcuse!...

12 Kesä 20091h 14min

John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008)

John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008)

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the waters of social and political criticism. One thinks ...

16 Joulu 20081h 10min

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