Theorising happens from a site of silence, rather the impulse to disrupt the unsettling calm, to create evidence where there is reality yet no narrative. Writing is no PR copy. There has to be sense and meaning.

Where is the line between dignity and representation?

Happy to find PhD scholars in Khaleeji Tarikh write in after reading my The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington article on Omani Bania’s last year. Shukran Jazeelan to Prof @kdiwaniya for the faith. I have more ideas on the Gulf which I have to write hopefully soon!

Diaspora Stores are the nostalgic switchboards of the past : Prof Ato of Stanford on Le Thinnai Research Platform.

In the gig economy, every contract is a limited time entity and the next gig might not emerge immediately. The WFH era, moves jobs remotely to the cheapest location. Work is really becoming networked however, an educated underclass is created. A generation that took loans, studied in private colleges in a hope of a greater earning power than the previous generation is feeling trapped, as they expect salaries to pay off the debt.

College graduates work as delivery executives as there is an income available. Did they study to work as gig economy nodes where every job is a gig for a client. An economy of gig workers is terrible for social mobility as it is a hand to mouth affair perennially.

Having a job is better than not having one, but the gig economy has ramifications for the real estate sector, banking and the most important market; that of marriage.

A different grammar is evolving which is adding to troll behaviour, aided by aspirational Instagram Influencers and a deficit in self confidence. The Total Fertility Ratio is bound to fall in many countries. A steady income elite having work in the public sector will be calcified as work and life as a relationship is redefined.

Prof Anand A Yang on his latest book ‘Empire of Convicts’ with Prof Aparna Vaidik ji.
A book I look forward to read in conjunction with The Collie’s Great War.

Fascinating personal narrative of Cheena Bhavana in Shantiniketan; where my cousin studied and my parents are Visvabharati alumni, and I am based in Singapore as a PhD Scholar 🙂 Profound as Prof Yang was born in Shantiniketan himself.

#Podcasts are current day oral archives. I am really petrified of amazing conversations which find a safe space in the realm of the digital, being lost in the absence of well thought out knowledge management frameworks especially in South Asia and the Gulf.

It would be generative to have good ones transcribed and edited into books. Knowledge production and dissemination is faster via podcasts. Atleast as raw data, they are fertile fodder for theory building, if not only for spreading the word aka PR.

I write everyday on social media, which is a never ending book; why should i go to a publisher? : @shekharkapur on @JLFLitfest on immersive non linear story telling. True, if one has the reach and the monetisation strategy – why pander to pompous lit agents?