Thomas Blom Hansen

During his fellowship Thomas Hansen will write a book, tentatively titled City of Enemies, that seeks to rethink urban experience from the Global South and beyond the classical themes of urban theory. The book focuses on the city of Aurangabad in India, a rapidly growing city that like hundreds of cities across South Asia is shaped by a long history of street riots between religious communities and antagonistic caste groups. Drawing on diverse materials gathered over three decades, Hansen will describe mutually hostile social worlds marked by deep inequalities, social segregation, fear and suspicion of ‘categorical others’, where community and informal networks of trust appear as indispensable guarantees of livelihoods, dwelling and a future.

Hansen is professor of anthropology at Stanford University. He has done extensive work on the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, Hindu-Muslim conflicts, identity politics, violence and memory in urban India, the anthropology of the state, configurations of sovereignty in the postcolonial world, as well as township life, religious revival, melancholia, memory and cultural politics among Indians in post-apartheid South Africa. He is the author of multiple books and articles, most recently The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics (Aleph Book Company, 2021) and Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India, Edited with Srirupa Roy (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

For more details, please visit: https://anthropology.stanford.edu/people/thomas-hansen