Invoking the concept of the "postnormal," Aarthi Sridhar, Annu Jalais, Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, and Sridhar Anantha reflect on how collaborative research can help overcome the pandemic’s limitations. Centering democracy and equity, their Southern Collective developed a range of research projects to collect emerging cultural information about life in the Indian Ocean littoral. As they demonstrate, the building of “networks of solidarity” was central to accomplishing this work and may prove critical to successful research in a postnormal world.
Annu Jalais
Annu Jalais, associate professor at Krea University, is an environmental anthropologist working on the human–animal interface, environmental justice, religious identity, caste, and migration, in Bangladesh and India. She authored Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans (Routledge, 2010) and coauthored The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim Migration (with Claire Alexander and Joya Chatterji; Routledge, 2016). Her most recent work has been the project, “Nonhumans and Zoonoses: What Do They Tell Us about Ourselves?,” awarded by UParis and NUS. She is one of the chief architects and founders of the Northern Indian Ocean collaboratory—the Southern Collective and is codeveloping it in partnership with Dakshin Foundation.