A/Prof Ursula Rao

Overview

http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/ursula-rao-389.html

Research Summary

Ursula Rao is an urban anthropologist researching in India. The central focus of her work is changing power relations in rapidly globalising cities, with regards to three different topics: (1) The role of religious institutions and ritual performances for renegotiating social relations; (2) the changing role of news media for shaping urban politics; (3) the interaction between urban poor and state agencies in a landscape of shifting ideologies of urbanity and social security.

UNSW Research Profile

Teaching

GLST 1100 - Introduction to Globalisation
ARTS 2874 - Senses: Knowing and Feeling
ARTS 3212 - Powerful India

Postgraduate Research Supervision

Spatial practices on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
Resettlement of Bhutanese refugees in Australia
Women empowerment in highland Pakistan

Publications

Selected Publications (English)

BOOKS

News as Culture. Journalistic Practices and the Remaking of Indian Leadership Traditions. (Oxford: Berghahn) 2010.
[SUMMARY] [REVIEW]

Negotiating the Divine. Temple Religion and Temple Politics in Contemporary Urban India. (Delhi, Manohar) 2003

EDITED VOLUMES

The Cultural Politics of Disadvantage in South Asia (co-edited with Assa Doron). Special Issue: Asian Studies Review 33(4), 2009
[SUMMARY]

Celebrating Transgression. As Method and Politics in the Anthropological Study of Culture (co-edited with John Hutnyk, Oxford, Berghahn) 2006.
[VIEW]

ARTICLES

'Neoliberalism and the rewriting of the Indian leader. In: American Ethnologist 37(4): 713-725

'Making the Global City. Urban Citizenship on the Margins of Delhi.' In: Ethnos 74(4): 402-424

‘Empowerment through local news-making. Studying the media-public interface in India.’ 2010. In: Elizabeth Bird (ed.) Anthropology of News and Journalism. Indiana University Press.
[VIEW]

'Caste and the Desire for Belonging' 2009. In: Asian Studies Review 33(4): 483-499.

'Partition in Contemporary Struggles over Religious Spaces in Bhopal’. 2007, In: Smita Tewari Jassal & Eyal Ben-Ari (eds.), Memory and the Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts. Delhi: Sage, pp. 297-320.

‘News from the Field. The experience of transgression and the transformation of knowledge during research in an expert-site.’ In: Ursula Rao and John Hutnyk (eds.): Celebrating Transgression. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 23-38

‘Ritual in Society’. 2006, In: Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek, Michael Stausberg (eds): Theorizing Rituals, Vol. I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill pp. 143-160

‘Assessing the Past in Search for a Future: The Changing of Caste and the Writing of Caste History in Contemporary Urban India’, 2002 In: Axel Harneit-Sievers (ed.): A Place in the World. New Local Historiographies from Africa and South Asia. Leiden: Brill, p. 347-366.
[VIEW]

‘How to Prove Divinities?Experiencing and Defending Divine Agency in a Modern Urban Indian Space’. 2001. In: Religion (32)1: 1-11.


Selected Publications (German)

BOOKS

Kommunalismus in Indien. Eine Darstellung der Wissenschaftlichen Debatte über Hindu Muslim Konflikte. (Halle: Halle Universität), 2003.
[PDF] (PDF)

EDITED VOLUMES

Kulturelle VerWandlungen. Die Gestaltung sozialer Welten in der Performanz. (edited, Frankfurt: Peter Lang) 2006.
[VIEW]

Im Rausch des Rituals. Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit durch körperliche Performanz . (co-edited with Klaus-Peter Köpping, Hamburg: Lit), 2000.
[REVIEW]

ARTICLES

'Arbeit am Ruf. Medienstrategien für indische Patrone.' 2009, In: Sociologus 511: 1-29

‚Ritual als Performanz. Zur Charakterisierung eines paradigmatischen Übergangs. 2008, In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 2008/1: 1-20.
[PDF]

‘Ritualpolitik. Die (nicht-)Emergenz von sozialer und politischer Autorität durch ritualisierte Performanz’. 2005, In: Erika Fischer-Lichte; Christian Horn; Sandra Umathum & Matthias Warstat (Hrsg.), Diskurse des Theatralen. Tübingen: Francke, S. 193-209.

‘Das Spiel von Nähe und Distanz. Werbung um Beziehungen und Meinungen im journalistischen Feld Nordindiens’. 2002, In: Herbert Willems (Hrsg.), Die Gesellschaft der Werbung. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, S. 265-282.
[VIEW]

‘Eine Frage des Glaubens. „Illegale“ Tempel und der Kampf um die Gestaltung des urbanen Raums in Indien’. 2000, In: Sociologus 502: 145-174.
[PDF]

Affiliations and Memberships

Associate of JMRC

Contributions

Book Reviews Editor (South, Middle and Central Asia), Asian Studies Review
Assistant Editor (Sociology/Anthropology) South Asia