World and Queer Anthropologies and the Question of Legal Reform

The past decade has seen a steep rise in research on LGBTQI+ sexuality and gender identity throughout the world. Much of this work, especially that produced in Africa and South Asia, used field research methods, but often without the benefit of reflecting on the history of those methods and the knowledge they do and do not produce.

Reviewing scholarship in queer and transgender studies from Africa and South Asia in particular, a set of priorities emerge that are specific to the histories of these regions. These include critiques of recent changes in the law, as well as uses of the law by states to assert nationalist aims through the appearance of tolerance, as in India, or its opposite, as in Uganda.

In this talk, Svati Shah will discuss how queer theory has opened up space in academic research to think expansively about sexuality and gender in the Global South. They will also discuss implications of field-level interventions that merge critiques from both Queer Anthropology and from World Anthropologies.