Colloquium: The Cultural Pre-Conditions of Hypocrisy: Observations from India – ACHTUNG! Entfällt wegen Krankheit!

  • Date: Oct 24, 2017
  • Time: 05:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Arjun Appadurai
  • Location: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin
  • Room: Large Conference Room
  • Host: Center for the History of Emotions
  • Contact: sekfrevert@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its winter semester 2017/2018 colloquium

Arjun Appadurai, New York University

The Cultural Pre-Conditions of Hypocrisy: Observations from India

Hypocrisy is not an emotion but it can produce strong emotional reactions and it is also produced by particular sorts of affect, such as fear, envy and ambition. The culturally interesting question about hypocrisy is whether it is a useful name for a universal posture - which can be defined as the presentation of self in a deliberately misleading and self-contradictory manner - or whether it is a highly specific form of self-projection that cannot be assumed to be universal. In his presentation, Arjun Appadurai will make the latter case, by using examples from India to show that hypocrisy is not a useful characterization of Indian selves because the architecture of self, personhood and motivation in India cannot make what we call hypocrisy meaningful.

Arjun Appadurai is the Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, where he is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge. He is also a Visiting Professor at Humboldt University (Berlin) and a Senior Fellow at the Hertie Institute (Berlin). Professor Appadurai is a world renowned expert on the cultural dynamics of globalization. He is the cofounder of the journal Public Culture and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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