Talk by / Bidisha Chaudhuri

Discussant / Thomas Chambers

Invoking ‘seeing the state’ as an analytical lens and adopting ‘anthropology of state’ as a methodological approach, it explores the changing state–citizen relationship through citizens’ everyday encounters with the state and through quotidian practices of the state mediated through material and social practices around Aadhaar, the foundational digital ID system in India.

Bidisha is a an Assistant Professor in the domain of IT and Society at IIIT Bangalore. She received her PhD from South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University, Germany. Her current research interests include, political economy of digital identity, sociology of work and automation, information systems for sustainable development, politics of data algorithms.

Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Social/Cultural Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. His more recent research has focused on India's paid domestic-care sector and on state bureaucracies, the temporalities of people/state engagements and the digitisation of ID and welfare provision.

This talk was hosted by Tandem Research, the former home of the Responsible Technology Initiative.