Partitions: What Are They Good For?

在某种程度上，当代的日常生活是由国家的政治分裂所塑造的。9/11、核战争的持续威胁、伊斯兰原教旨主义威胁的上升、西方“报复性”军事干预的增加，都被认为是巴勒斯坦和印度分裂的一些结果。对于我们这些生活在欧洲的人来说，（在欧洲）分裂、统一和分裂的威胁充斥着我们的日常新闻。欧洲当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来检查分割现象及其在全球范围内的影响，看看事件，人，历史和思想是如何强有力地相互联系在一起的。比较分区网络旨在更全面地理解民族国家、社区和归属感在跨国、全球化世界中的相关性。通过采用比较方法，该网络将促进对分区进行更跨学科、跨方法和跨文化的研究，从而使这一主题充满活力。它还将把学术界内部的联系公开化，从而吸引更多的学者。通过对欧洲内部分裂和统一的额外关注，该网络将通过将研究后殖民思想的学者与研究欧洲历史和文化的学者联系起来，激发对民主和自由的讨论，这些讨论被认为是欧洲特有的。该网络的目标有几个：将不同领域的学者聚集在一起，参加三次专题讨论会，这将导致一个经过编辑的文集；将公众参与活动与专题讨论会审查的主题联系起来；建立一个关于比较分区的网站，其中将包括会议公告、研讨会和会议的播客、书评和工作清单；并将研究网络与来自分裂国家的移民社区的口述历史工作联系起来。每次研讨会的公众参与活动都是为了强调研究网络的发现超越了理论和学术知识，包括人们的情感生活，并展示抽象知识与人们生活之间的关系。这个网络将汇集来自英国、美国、意大利、法国、新西兰和印度的英国文学、历史、社会学、哲学、法律、文化研究、妇女研究和政治领域的学者。受益者将是多方面的，包括从事民主和民族国家、移民、文化记忆和暴力等不同领域的学者。由于该网络更加注重社区参与活动，如电影放映、图书馆公共阅读和其他形式的讨论，因此该网络还将使来自分裂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负责人，该项目收集了印度分界的记忆，并就这一主题发表了大量文章。她还在2009年组织了一次关于比较分区的会议，并编辑了两期关于该主题的期刊特刊。

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.