November 1, 2009
A Harvard University anthropologist will present a Dec. 2 talk titled “Gandhi and Thoreau: Signals and Affinities” as part of the Global Humanities Series at York College.
Bhrigupati Singh will speak at 3:30 p.m. in the Humanities Center 218. His talk is open to the public free of charge. For more information, contact Victor Taylor at vetaylor@ycp.edu or call 717-815-1349.
Can we conceptualize certain comparative moral problems to which each of the world religions variously respond? How are these problems rearticulated within secular moralities? Through Gandhi, and his admiration for Thoreau and American Transcendentalism, we take up one such problem: the question of the ascetic ideal, or a positive conception of frugality. How do we understand the tension between different modes of frugality and excess in our times? Is a moral affirmation of “excess” possible?
Drawing on his ethnographic work on Hinduism, as well as certain resonating strands of moral philosophy, Singh places these questions in relation to the emergent framework of global “political theologies.” This framework, he argues, allows us to consider comparative dimensions of these questions across divine and “godless” moralities.
Singh studied in Delhi, London, and Baltimore. He completed his doctoral degree in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and is a Visiting Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is currently working on two book projects, which explore comparative concepts in religious and secular moralities within the framework of global “political theologies.” The first project is an ethnographic study of Hinduism in a context of rural poverty titled “Gods and Grains: Lives of Desire in Rural Central India.” The second project is a set of essays in moral philosophy titled “This World, Another World: Essays in Political Theologies.”