📢 THE BOOK IS HERE! 😳😍
Cosmopolitan Elites is a labour of love that narrates the social position of Indian diplomats in the world and asks what happens if we begin to think of cosmopolitanism as a social aesthetic of elite belonging
Available at:
My very 1st journal article is out with
@IAJournal_CH
🇮🇳
“Saffronizing diplomacy: the Indian Foreign Service under Hindu nationalist rule” queries how India’s diplomats are making sense of a changing India and the evolving nature of its elites
So very excited to join the good people of
@LSEIRDept
and becoming a full-time Londoner again
Book on Indian diplomats and the social hierarchies of global order incoming with
@OUPPolitics
Hit me up for coffee and research collabs on critical approaches to global order!
🍾Thrilled to receive the 2024 Best Article Award from
@isadiplomacy
!
👉🏼 “The Cosmopolitan Standard of Civilization: A Reflexive Sociology of Elite Belonging among Indian Diplomats” is here:
Thanks to
@EuroJournIR
for giving it the perfect home
we are happy to announce that the 2024 Best Article Award goes to
@KiraHuju
for her
@EuroJournIR
article 'The cosmopolitan standard of civilization: a reflexive sociology of elite belonging among Indian diplomats' 👏🏼 congratulations Kira!
In delayed professional news... 📢
I've joined
@FCDOGovUK
as a
@BritishAcademy_
Fellow & India research analyst
At
@LSEIRDept
once a week - so please stay in touch on Indian diplomacy, the tricky politics of decolonisation, Global South projects, etc!
“The Cosmopolitan Standard of Civilisation” is out with
@EuroJournIR
!
I adopt a sociological approach to hierarchies of caste/class/race/gender among the diplomatic elite in 🇮🇳 to think critically about "cosmopolitan elites" in IR
A 🧵!
There is growing unease in the academy about decolonial appropriation: the fashionable language of decolonial liberation is strategically mobilised to market nationalistic, nativist and conservative ends.
By
@KiraHuju
, author of 'Cosmopolitan Elites:
So delighted to find my article shortlisted for the
@IAJournal_CH
Early Career Prize alongside these three stellar scholars 🎉
It studies change, adaptation, and resistance in the Indian Foreign Service under Hindutva
(Links to our articles in original tweet!)
Happy Friday! 🫶
📢Announcement: The shortlist for our annual Early Career Prize is live!
Find out about the four fantastic pieces that have been selected below. Winner to be announced during the
@isanet
conference in March.👇🧵
📩 1st review of my book is in & I’m blushing
“Huju’s display of empirical and analytical rigour is brilliant […] This book is a must read to understanding contemporary Indian outlooks on the world.”
Thank you for this generous assessment to
@LowyInstitute
and Adarsh Badri
I reviewed
@KiraHuju
's book, Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order, for
@LowyInstitute
. This book seeks to situate an Indian diplomat between two worlds.
Overall, an impressive read!
@danielflitton
READ:
I put my heart into teaching so it’s wonderful to be recognised for it with an LSE Class Teacher Award - but getting to teach alongside the brilliant
@DrKMillar
and
@sinja_graf
is actually it’s own kind of award already 🫶🏻
We are really happy to announce our LSESU and LSE Class Teacher Award winners: Dr Federica Bicchi, Dr Katharine Millar, Sophie Kaldor, Eva Sørensen and Dr Kira Huju!
🔗LSE SU Awards
@lsesu
.
🔗LSE Class Teacher Awards
@EdenLSE
.
Talking about my book Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order ☝🏼
- with
@PoMoGandhi
at SOAS at 17.00 today
All very welcome!
👀 Had a blast doing this podcast interview about my book on Indian diplomats and the social lives of global order with
@NewBooksNetwork
Especially fun as I’ve been a faithful listener of
@NewBooksSAsia
and
@NewBooksCritThe
for years 🙏🏻
Listen here👇🏼
Dr Kira Huju?! 👩🏼🎓🍾
PhD defence: ✔️
Next up, the book! 📖
“The Making and Unmaking of Cosmopolitan Elites: Hierarchy, Diversity, and Indian Diplomats in International Society”
With immense gratitude to the wonderful Andrew Hurrell and
@Kate_SdE
💎
#phdlife
#IndianIR
#globalIR
How Modi is changing Indian diplomacy
In this 🆕 blog,
@KiraHuju
investigates how Hindu nationalist ideals are being entrenched in the Indian Foreign Service, and why we need to pay attention.
Read it now 👇
This intriguing
@TheEconomist
article on global Hindutva discusses my research in
@IAJournal_CH
on the "saffronization" of Indian diplomacy
Interested in diplomacy in the age of populism? The full academic article is here:
“African historiography is an excellent vantage point for a postcolonial critique of India.” This is the premise of Shobana Shankar’s An Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India and the Spectre of Race. |
@KiraHuju
Walking into the final MSc seminar for Critical Perspectives in IR at
@LSEIRDept
and finding this from the (giggling) students
A lovely end of term that exemplifies what is best about teaching: creative, engaged students who put their 🤍 into making sense of the world with us
“Saffronizing diplomacy: the Indian Foreign Service under Hindu nationalist rule” is now out in the March issue of
@IAJournal_CH
🇮🇳
Read it to see how a traditionally cosmopolitan diplomatic cadre of a rising power is accomodating/resisting change in the global age of populism
💥NEW ISSUE: Our March issue is online now!💥
These 2⃣0⃣ articles explore everything from Russian 🇷🇺 conflict management to hybrid diplomacy.
Read the issue, inc. 12
#openaccess
articles and 28 book reviews, here >
🇮🇳 Looking for a qualified private tutor to teach me intermediate हिन्दी ! Online is fine, perhaps even preferable. 2 hours, weekly.
My DMs are open for hot tips and shameless self-promotion! 🙏🏻
Thrilled:
@thewire_in
writes article about my article on saffronization of the IFS for
@IAJournal_CH
I focused on internal resistance, but anonymous source told journalist it was downplayed.
A sign of not having read original article or of growing resistance since 2019?
Always read Sankaran Krishna - this time on race, caste, and merit in this strange discipline called IR.
A rare blend of generous, hilarious, and cutting, as usual.
Sankaran Krishna is our chief diagnostician; of an ironically mediocre discipline actually. But every word he writes has such ferocious elegance that it is sometimes worthy to be in the discipline to just be able to reads critiques like these.
@IAJournal_CH
has assembled a reading list on
#diplomacy
and
#statecraft
, which includes my article on the Indian Foreign Service under Hindu nationalist rule.
Great resource, including suggestions on debate topics for seminars!
NEW Reading List: Diplomacy and Statecraft
From global health diplomacy in North Korea, to hybrid diplomacy in COVID-19, this list brings together leading research and seminar questions to help you think through core IR issues.
Find them here >
The article asks what it takes to belong among the “cosmopolitan elite” in international society/the diplomatic community. It develops the notion of a “cosmopolitan habitus” and queries the caste/class/race/gender/religion/indigeneity hierarchies that go into its reproduction.
@vineet1232
@j_u_ko
Wonderful resource, yet again. Am actually teaching critical theory, neo-Gramscianism, and UCD *today* - will send this to the graduate students. Thank you!
How to study silence - caste and IR.
Thank you for the brilliant initiative
@vineet1232
, this should be on everybody’s listening list for the weekend. And then on their syllabi?
So here it is, Caste and IR. Listen to four smashing young scholars on why caste doesn't figure in IR and what to do about it. Global South Adda with
@pavanjnu
, Ankit Kawade, Kalathmika Natarajan, and Medha.
@contactniice
@DhingraSanya
Thank you for this- I am working on similar themes for a paper. Another devastating development is founders of the decoloniality school writing endorsements for works of decolonial Hindutva. Eg Mignolo’s (later retracted) endorsement of J Sai Deepak’s “India That is Bharat”.
👇A compelling conversation between a dream team of scholars of Indian foreign policy -
@Kate_SdE
and
@HappymonJacob
- around Indo-UK hierarchies, some of the hypocrisies of liberal international order, and a few glaring gaps in political literacy in a recent
#ChathamHouse
report
In this episode of National Security Conversations,
@HappymonJacob
discusses the recently published Chatham House report entitled ‘Global Britain, global broker’ with
@Kate_SdE
.
We rejoice at the news of the liberation of EU colleague & 🇸🇪 citizen Johan Floderus and his compatriot Saeed Azizi. We thank Swedish & Omani authorities. Other EU citizens are still arbitrarily detained in Iran. We’ll continue to work for their freedom together w/ EU MS involved
Our brilliant, beloved friend Johan has spent over 500 days arbitrarily detained in Iran.
He is held without justifiable cause or due process, in conditions that contradict basic human rights law.
He must come home now.
Join us:
#freeJohanfloderus
”They’ve realized that this country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough and unscrupulous enough, and smart enough not to seem illegal, can grab hold of the entire government and have all the power and applause”
- Sinclair Lewis, 1935
#CapitolRiots
#Trump
#CoupAttempt
@KalathmikaN
So glad this found its way to you, Kalathmika! The book on the IFS that expands on this has a much stronger caste angle, and it would be such a joy to return to our brief chats a few years ago around caste and IR at some point.
Thank you to the
@Europarl_EN
for passing a Resolution calling for the immediate release of our dear friend Johan Floderus, who is illegally detailed in Tehran, in conditions that violate his most basic rights
Johan must come home! 💔
#freejohanfloderus
Today, on the 585th day since Johan was illegally detained in Iran, the
@Europarl_EN
passed a Resolution calling for his immediate release!
👏We applaud and thank all MEPs for their strong condemnation of Iran’s practice of arbitrary detentions, as well as their support for
हमारी गोलमेज़ श्रृंखला की पहली कड़ी में,
@vineet1232
ने हिंदू राष्ट्रवादी #मोदी सरकार के तहत भारतीय विदेश सेवा (आईएफएस) के परिवर्तन पर
@IAJournal_CH
में
@KiraHuju
के जर्नल लेख की समीक्षा की, जिसके बाद उनकी प्रतिक्रिया के अंश यहाँ पढ़ें:
@pavanjnu
@Tishya_Khillare
@vineet1232
@contactniice
Seconded! As somebody who looks at caste in the context of the IFS in my DPhil, I would love to see this list, too. And if one gets made, I will do my best to contribute to it, too, of course - so that perhaps it can function as a starting point for an ever-expanding resource.
@ChichoriKtputli
@rohan_mukh
Sharinee Jagtiani works on Indian regionalism and Cold War history at Oxford! Sending details via Whasapp. You guys are wonderful!
@ZeeMohamed_
This is a generous assessment, thank you. However, surely the reason it’s ended up attracting so much attention is the lack of serious research on this topic - especially unforgivable in the more senior circles of the Indian IR community with greater access and safety net(work)s
@KalathmikaN
does groundbreaking (and beautifully written) work on caste in international perspective
- if you are around Oxford next Tuesday, this one is not to be missed 👏🏼
Women Experts- Indian Foreign Policy :Making life easy for all 'manel' makers. Here is a list of 53 women experts working on Indian foreign policy:)
P.S:Others,please feel free to correct/add names that were missed out!
@rohan_mukh
Thank you for the help!
@CasMudde
So glad this found its way to you, out of all people! I have been thinking about how to bring a comparative and/or global angle to the populism-diplomacy nexus for a new article, in fact. Would be curious to hear more re the Dutch example, too…
On this week's
#GrandTamasha
podcast, I speak with
@Rukmini
about the state of political journalism in India and the buzz around women voters. Plus
@jamescrabtree
reports on his recent election trip to Uttar Pradesh & West Bengal.
Listen:
With friends like this, who needs enemies? 🤷🏼♀️
The orientalism, European exceptionalism, and parochialism evident in speech by EU Foreign Policy Chief
@JosepBorrellF
is a direct impediment to EU’s global credibility.
Maybe get
@KalypsoNicolaid
to proofread next time…?
@EmadAssadi
@meenakandasamy
Thanks for tagging my work! My sense is that the decolonial project needs to be rethought, not abandoned, in the face of its appropriation by Hindutva. Not sure what
@meenakandasamy
thinks?
@TommiHNieminen
Thin silver linings: Guhan itse livenä dokumentoitu rauhallinen (lähes herrasmiesmäinen) mielenosoitus ja rationaalisesti perusteltu näkökanta CAA:han trendaa nyt ympäri Intiaa kaiken disinformaation keskellä protestoijien motivaatioista ja käyttäytymisestä.
@dbelemlopes
@Felipe_Estre
This is very kind, thank you. A hopefully much improved version of that PhD is coming out as a book with OUP this autumn... Let's continue the conversation on comparisons for sure!