Papers by Madhumitha Ardhanari
Little is known about the historical figure known as Akhenaten. What we do know is that as the ru... more Little is known about the historical figure known as Akhenaten. What we do know is that as the ruler of the Egyptian civilisation from 1353-1336 BC, Amenhotep IV brought in many radical changes to his empire. Five years into his reign, the pharaoh abandoned the traditional polytheistic Egyptian belief system and established a new faith centering on a single sun disk god, known as Aten. He built a new capital city in Amarna, far from the original capital city, Thebes. More significantly, Akhenaten departed from the traditional ways of depicting the new Atenist religion, royal family and his political life by adopting a new style of art, now known as the Amarna art. However, after Akhenaten's death, his new faith and the Amarna art were gradually forgotten. His temples were dismantled. His successors gave him the most severe punishment -they removed Akhenaten's name from king lists and had his face chiseled off from official murals. Within the next decade, traditional art and religion were re-adopted by both the the new rulers and their subjects. According to archaeologists and historians, the conventional explanations of the failure of Akhenaten's worship of Aten have been political -that Akhenaten was an unpopular, heretic ruler or that the priests were affronted by the potential loss of their political power and used their influence to discredit Atenism. However, I find this to be insufficient an explanation as it fails to appreciate the nuances of everyday life in our past. I argue that an understanding of the sensory or corporeal experience of Amarna art can explain the unpopularity of Atenism by illuminating what has been elided by political and rational explanations.
One of the most well-known articles published on how representative international relations (IR) ... more One of the most well-known articles published on how representative international relations (IR) is in including global perspectives was written by Ole Waever. His argument in a 1998 article entitled "The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline" is that there is a clear American and European hegemony in IR scholarship. While there are many critiques of Waever, most of the scholarly debate on this argument is usually neo-positivist in their methodology. The focus is usually on comparing quantitative data from different countries and scholarly journals in order to evaluate how international IR is in terms of scholarship. That is, even the scholarly discourse through which the actual internationality of IR is discussed is highly restricted in its use of methodology. Ironically, in doing so, Waever reinforces the very dominance that he seeks to critique. The need to decolonise and democratise the discipline is stressed by many authors but few provide insights on how we can make way for the redress of the status quo present in IR between dominant and peripheral IR scholars.
A highly fascinating market to analyse is the market for slum redevelopment in Mumbai. Mumbai is ... more A highly fascinating market to analyse is the market for slum redevelopment in Mumbai. Mumbai is one of the most bustling cities in Maharashtra, India. About seven million people in Mumbai live in slums, which constitutes more than half of the city's population. The country's government has attempted to clear the slums since the 1950's with little success in order to make way for economic development. This strategy was later recognized to be ineffective and the government's focus turned to slum redevelopment in the 1970's. However, the slums in Mumbai continue to be impoverished and persist. In fact, Dharavi, which was known as Asia's largest slum for a few decades, was surpassed in size by four other Mumbai slums in 2011. This means that slums in Mumbai are expanding while the quality of living in slums has not improved significantly. At the same time, redevelopment projects in slums in the city garner lucrative profits, a single project can fetch over Rupees 7,000 crores (approximately 1.29 billion USD). The most conventional reasons for this sluggishness of the market for slum redevelopment has been attributed to bureaucratic inefficiency and governmental corruption. For this reason, many scholars writing on this discourse argue for less state intervention and more private regulation for a more efficient market. However, these calls for lesser state regulation are inadequate as it is important to understand the unique challenges faced by the government, institutions and inhabitants of Mumbai before being able to decide what level of regulation is the most appropriate for slum redevelopment in Mumbai. I argue that the market for slum redevelopment in Mumbai requires a closer analysis of the stakeholders and regulatory structures present in order to evaluate the quality of state intervention.
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Papers by Madhumitha Ardhanari