The Association for Asian Studies is set to present Dr Kriti Kapila with the Bernard S Cohn prize in recognition of her book, Nullius, during a ceremony in Seattle on March 16.
Currently a professor at King’s College, London, Kapila’s book published is titled ‘Nullius: the anthropology of ownership, sovereignty, and the law in India’. It is an anthropological account of the troubled place of ownership and its consequences for social relations in India.
The book provides a detailed study of three doctrinal paradigms where proprietary relations have been erased, denied or misappropriated by the Indian state. Kapila contends that even though property rights and ownership are a cornerstone of modern law, they are a spectral presence in the Indian case.
Currently a lecturer in Anthropology and law at King’s India institute and the department of global health and social medicine, Kapila is presently on a sabbatical as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. She is also a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris.
Prior to working at King’s, Kapila held a senior research associate position at the Institute of Global Health, University College London, and a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She also chairs the Society for Ethnographic Theory.
Kapila completed her PhD at the London School of Economics and her master’s at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Meanwhile, Bernard S Cohn was an influential anthropologist who contributed significantly to the understanding of colonialism, law and social structures, particularly in India.
The prize honors outstanding and innovative scholarship across discipline and country of specialization for a first single-authored English-language monograph on South Asia, published during the preceding year. It aims to acknowledge two books, one in humanities and one in social sciences, each year.
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