Partitions: What Are They Good For?

在某种程度上，当代的日常生活已经被国家的政治分割所塑造。9/11事件、核战争的持续威胁、伊斯兰教原教旨主义威胁的不断上升、“报复”的西方加强军事干预，这些都被认为是巴勒斯坦和印度分裂的部分结果。对于我们这些生活在欧洲的人来说，(在欧洲)分裂、统一和分裂的威胁不时出现在我们的日常新闻中。欧洲目前的债务危机可能会导致欧洲再次分裂。这是一个及时的时刻，可以在全球范围内审查分治现象及其影响，看看事件、人民、历史和思想是如何相互强有力地联系在一起的。比较分区网络旨在更充分地了解民族国家、社区和归属在一个跨国全球世界中的相关性。通过采用比较方法，该网络将促进对分区进行更多跨学科、跨方法和跨文化的研究，从而为这一主题注入活力。它还将把学术内部的联系公开化，从而吸引更多的学者。通过更多地关注欧洲内部的分裂和统一，该网络将通过将研究后殖民思想的学者与欧洲历史和文化的学者联系起来，为被认为是欧洲独有的民主和自由的讨论注入活力。该网络的目标有几个：将不同领域的学者聚集在一起参加三个专题讨论会，这将导致编辑一本论文集；将公共参与活动与专题讨论会所审查的专题联系起来；开发一个关于比较分区的网站，其中将包括会议公告、研讨会和会议播客、书评、工作清单；以及将研究网络与来自分区国家的移民社区所做的口述历史工作联系起来。每次研讨会上的公众参与活动都是为了强调，研究网络的成果超越了理论和学术知识，包括了人们的情感生活，并展示了抽象知识和人们生活之间的关系。这个网络将汇集英国文学、历史、社会学、哲学、法律、文化研究、妇女研究和政治方面的学者，分布在英国、美国、意大利、法国、新西兰和印度。受益者将是多方面的，将包括致力于民主和民族国家、移民、文化记忆和暴力的不同领域的学者。由于更加注重社区参与活动，如放映电影、图书馆的公众读物和其他形式的讨论，该网络还将使来自被分割国家的移民社区以及对欧洲和世界历史感兴趣的普通公众受益。Pi Mohanram是一个口述历史项目的团队负责人，该项目收集了印度分治的记忆，并在这个主题上发表了大量文章。她还在2009年组织了一次关于比较分区的会议，并编辑了两期有关这一主题的特刊。

Everyday contemporary life has been shaped, to some extent, by the political partitioning of nations. 9/11, the continued threat of nuclear wars, the rising fundamentalist threat of Islam, the increased military interventions by a 'retaliating' West are all considered to be some of the results of the partitions of Palestine and India. For those of us who live in Europe, partitions, reunifications and the threats of partition (in Europe) punctuate our daily news. The current debt crisis in Europe might result in yet another partitioning of Europe. This is a timely moment to examine the phenomenon of partitions and their repercussions on a global scale and to see how events, people, histories and ideas are all powerfully linked to each other. The Comparative Partitions Network aims to arrive at a fuller understanding of the relevance of nation-states, communities and belonging in a transnational, global world. By following a comparative approach, this Network will invigorate the subject by promoting a more cross-disciplinary, cross-methodological and cross-cultural study of partitions. It will also bring out the connections within the scholarship into the open and thus appeal to a wider audience of academics. Through its additional focus on partitions and reunifications within Europe this Network will energise discussions of democracy and freedom that are considered to be particular to Europe by involving scholars who work on postcolonial thought with those of European history and culture. The objectives of the Network are several: to bring scholars in diverse fields together to participate in three symposia which will lead to an edited collection of essays; to link public engagement events to the topics examined in the symposia; to develop a website on comparative partitions which will include announcements of conferences, podcasts of seminars and conferences, book reviews, job listings; and to link the Research Network with the oral history work done with migrant communities from partitioned countries. The public engagement events at each symposium are to underscore that the findings of the Research Network go beyond theoretical and scholarly knowledge to include the emotional lives of people, and to show the relationship between abstract knowledge and people's lives. This Network will bring together scholars in English Literature, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Law, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies and Politics spread throughout the UK, US, Italy, France, New Zealand, and India. The beneficiaries will be multiple and will include academics in diverse fields working on democracy and nation-states, migrants, cultural memory and violence. Because of its additional focus on community engagement events such as the screening of films, public readings in the library and other forms of discussion, this Network will also benefit migrant communities from partitioned countries as well as the general public that is interested in European and world history. PI Mohanram was team leader for an oral history project that collected memories of the Indian partition and has published widely on this topic. She also organised a conference on Comparative Partitions in 2009 as well as edited two special issues of refereed journals on the topic.