Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds: The Politics of Visual Representation of the Parsi Community in Mumbai

帕西人是传统上居住在古吉拉特邦的少数民族，但主要居住在孟买。他们是琐罗亚斯德教的信徒，也是世纪因伊斯兰征服的威胁而逃离波斯的移民。该社区经历了欧洲以外有史以来最严重的人口下降之一，原因是低结婚率，严格的内婚制和高移民率。探索视觉表征的政治，我的研究旨在了解个人身份，集体记忆和社会关系在孟买的帕西人社区是如何介导和通过视觉图像，特别是通过照片构建。注意到摄影，记忆和身份政治交织在一起的多种方式，这个项目旨在捕捉一个濒临消失的社区身份建设的细微差别。事实上，帕西人生存的复杂困境提供了一个动力，迫切需要研究社区的生存斗争，并批判性地理解在社会配置和代表帕西人的公共和私人自我的差异。此外，鉴于当今印度民族主义叙事的迅速发展，及时记录少数帕西人社区越来越重要，这有助于围绕印度少数群体的视觉表现展开更广泛的辩论。以照片为出发点，可以分析归属、民族和社区的政治情感是如何通过视觉图像来表达的。我的研究进一步旨在利用帕西社区的例子，以促进更广泛的批判性分析，围绕保护少数群体的文化习俗和遗产，在日益增长的认知擦除的恐惧。例如，博物馆和档案馆是探索保护少数群体文化习俗和集体记忆的重要场所，特别是通过考虑殖民和后殖民身份来这样做。该项目将推进一种身临其境的民族志方法，结合一些深入的定性方法，如参与者观察，以及通过摄影和电影的视觉记录，以了解帕西社区的社会生活，并提取关于身份建设的见解。这种民族志的方法提供了具体的机会，发展一个主位的理解帕西身份。因此，这项博士研究的首要目标是批判性地探索隐藏的和更广泛的社区文化关注，如嵌入照片和随后的关系产生的过去和现在，记忆和现实之间。

The Parsis are a small ethnic minority traditionally living in Gujarat, but primarily located in Mumbai. They are adherents of the Zoroastrian faith and emigrés who fled Persia in the eighth century due to the threat of Islamic conquest. The community has experienced one of the most dramatic declines in population ever recorded outside of Europe, due to low nuptiality, strict endogamy and high emigration. Exploring the politics of visual representation, my research seeks to understand how individual identity, collective memory and social relations within the Parsi community in Mumbai are mediated and constructed through visual imagery, in particular, through photographs. Noting the manifold ways in which photography, memory and identity politics are interwoven, this project aims to capture the nuances of identity construction for a community on the brink of disappearance. Indeed, the complex predicament of Parsi survival provides an impetus to urgently research community struggles for survival and to critically understand the differences in the social configuration and representation of Parsi public and private selves. Further, given today's rapidly advancing Indian nationalistic narrative, timely documentation of the minority Parsi community is increasingly vital, lending itself to broader debates around the visual representation of minority groups in India. Using photographs as a point of departure, analysis can be undertaken on the ways in which political sentiments of belonging, nationhood and community are mediated through visual imagery. My research further aims to use the example of the Parsi community to facilitate wider critical analysis around the preservation of cultural practices and heritage for minority groups amidst growing fears of epistemic erasure. Museums and archives, for instance, are key sites in which to explore the preservation of minority cultural practices and collective memory, especially through reckonings with colonial and post-colonial identities. This project will advance an immersive ethnographic methodology combining a number of in-depth qualitative approaches such as participant observation, as well as visual documentation through photography and film, to understand the social life of the Parsi community and extract insights on identity construction. Such an ethnographic approach offers specific opportunities to develop an emic understanding of Parsi identity. This doctoral research therefore has an overarching aim to critically explore the hidden and wider cultural concerns of the community as embedded within photographs and the subsequent relationship engendered between past and present, memory and reality.