Contemplating friendship in times of strangership

Friendships evoke a sense of familiarity and place. Ammara Maqsood will thus ask: What then are the possibilities for and limits of friendship when one side can be rendered stranger at any moment?

Blurred colourful crowd of people. Bits and splits / Adobe Stock.

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Contemplating friendship in times of strangership

12 Dec 2024, 12:00 – 13:00

Room G03
55-59 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0NU
United Kingdom

In this seminar, Ammara reflects on this concern through an ethnography of Hindu-Muslim encounters in Karachi.

Focusing on upwardly mobile settings, where both Hindus and Muslims have migrated from smaller towns and villages to Karachi for education and employment, she focuses on instances where friendships develop not so much out of choice and pleasure of company but out of proximity and practical need as people navigate an unknown and complex urban space.

Faced with the ever-present spectre of a blasphemy accusation, Hindu interlocutors invite and sometimes even cultivate the protection of their Muslim counterparts. Simultaneously, however, they remain vigilant that, at any moment, their position can change quite drastically and that they might need protection from these very friends. She reflects on this rendering in relation to and in parallel with writing about it in a time and place in the UK, where recent politics have drawn to the surface similar tensions of friendships and strangerships.

This in-person event will be particularly useful for those interested in anthropology, South Asia, and friendship.

Image

Bits and Splits via Adobe Stock.

Dr Ammara Maqsood

Associate Professor in Social Anthropology

UCL

Her research centres on middle-class religiosity, kinship, upward mobility and intimate aspirations in urban Pakistan.

Her current work focuses on questions of religious difference in non-secular contexts and is funded by the ERC grant ‘Multi-Religious Encounters in Urban Settings’.