Meera Venkatachalam
Biographic Data
| ID | 124175 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meera Venkatachalam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meera |
| FAMILY NAME | Venkatachalam |
| SIGNATURE | VENKATACHALAM M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7567-8906 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Moral geographies
This article seeks to understand the evolution of India’s political relations and development cooperation with Africa, in the context of India’s ambitions of playing a leading role in the Third World turned Global South. India’s development cooperation with African nations was informed in the early decades after the country’s independence by a sense of solidarity. It is argued that despite a sense of Third Worldist solidarity, Indian actors parti…
The politics of gifts and reciprocity in South–South Cooperation
Development economists have often argued that South–South flows of capital and aid are devoid of the conditionalities and hierarchies that define North–South flows of the same. Maussians and neo‐Maussians maintain that gifting—which allows for the ethos of reciprocity—leads to the formation of more equal international partnerships. This article focusses on India's development diplomacy. We unpack Indian cultural notions of ‘gifting’, which do not…
African Pentecostalism in India
Over the past four decades, since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade. There is a visible African diaspora in many localities in India. This diaspora is a layered one, consisting of diverse groups of people with different degrees of attachment to India: Africans settled in India with kinship ties, mobile professionals and students, and itinerant trad…
India's Development Diplomacy & Soft Power in Africa
Unpacks the histories, actors and geopolitics of India's soft power and evolving engagements with Africa. Since independence India has deployed its soft power in Africa, with educational aid and capacity-building at the heart of its Africa policy. However, following economic liberalisation and in a quest for greater global influence, India's geopolitics have changed. The country's discourse on Africa has shifted from the mantras of post-colonial …
India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa
Slavery, Memory and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c. 1850–Present
Based on a decade of fieldwork in southeastern Ghana and analysis of secondary sources, this book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of rituals collectively known as 'Fofie', which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past. The Anlo developed a sense of discomfort about their agency in slavery in the early twentieth century …
Between the Devil and the Cross
The idea that mission Christianity played a pivotal role in the creation of modern African ethnic identities has become paradigmatic. Yet, the actual cultural and social processes that facilitated the widespread reception of specific ethnic identities have been under-researched. Suggesting that historians have overemphasised the role of Christian schooling and theology in ethnic identity formation, this article examines how the Anlo people of sou…
Between the Umbrella and the Elephant
This article focuses on a number of Ga spirit mediums located in Teshi, a neighbourhood of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. These individuals host foreign spirits from areas north of Ga territory, such as the modern Ashanti, Gonja and Dagomba regions. Such encounters of cross-cultural spirit possession have often been analysed in the scholarly literature as an embedded history of contact between peoples. These histories of ethnic or cultural contact …
Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-Drumming Community in Ghana
Female Voices, by James Burns, is based on meticulous fieldwork conducted over a decade and a half in the Ewe village of Dzodze in south-eastern Ghana. The book, with an accompanying DVD, focuses on the women of a local dance-drumming group called Dzigbordi and contains a thorough explanation of the associated dance choreography and drum language. The nature, organization, functioning and social utility of Dzigbordi are examined in great detail, …
Between the Umbrella and the Elephant
This article focuses on a number of Ga spirit mediums located in Teshi, a neighbourhood of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. These individuals host foreign spirits from areas north of Ga territory, such as the modern Ashanti, Gonja and Dagomba regions. Such encounters of cross-cultural spirit possession have often been analysed in the scholarly literature as an embedded history of contact between peoples. These histories of ethnic or cultural contact …
Between the Devil and the Cross
The idea that mission Christianity played a pivotal role in the creation of modern African ethnic identities has become paradigmatic. Yet, the actual cultural and social processes that facilitated the widespread reception of specific ethnic identities have been under-researched. Suggesting that historians have overemphasised the role of Christian schooling and theology in ethnic identity formation, this article examines how the Anlo people of sou…
Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-Drumming Community in Ghana
Female Voices, by James Burns, is based on meticulous fieldwork conducted over a decade and a half in the Ewe village of Dzodze in south-eastern Ghana. The book, with an accompanying DVD, focuses on the women of a local dance-drumming group called Dzigbordi and contains a thorough explanation of the associated dance choreography and drum language. The nature, organization, functioning and social utility of Dzigbordi are examined in great detail, …
Between the Umbrella and the Elephant
This article focuses on a number of Ga spirit mediums located in Teshi, a neighbourhood of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. These individuals host foreign spirits from areas north of Ga territory, such as the modern Ashanti, Gonja and Dagomba regions. Such encounters of cross-cultural spirit possession have often been analysed in the scholarly literature as an embedded history of contact between peoples. These histories of ethnic or cultural contact …
Between the Devil and the Cross
The idea that mission Christianity played a pivotal role in the creation of modern African ethnic identities has become paradigmatic. Yet, the actual cultural and social processes that facilitated the widespread reception of specific ethnic identities have been under-researched. Suggesting that historians have overemphasised the role of Christian schooling and theology in ethnic identity formation, this article examines how the Anlo people of sou…
Slavery, Memory and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c. 1850–Present
Based on a decade of fieldwork in southeastern Ghana and analysis of secondary sources, this book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of rituals collectively known as 'Fofie', which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past. The Anlo developed a sense of discomfort about their agency in slavery in the early twentieth century …
India's Development Diplomacy & Soft Power in Africa
Unpacks the histories, actors and geopolitics of India's soft power and evolving engagements with Africa. Since independence India has deployed its soft power in Africa, with educational aid and capacity-building at the heart of its Africa policy. However, following economic liberalisation and in a quest for greater global influence, India's geopolitics have changed. The country's discourse on Africa has shifted from the mantras of post-colonial …
India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa
African Pentecostalism in India
Over the past four decades, since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade. There is a visible African diaspora in many localities in India. This diaspora is a layered one, consisting of diverse groups of people with different degrees of attachment to India: Africans settled in India with kinship ties, mobile professionals and students, and itinerant trad…
The politics of gifts and reciprocity in South–South Cooperation
Development economists have often argued that South–South flows of capital and aid are devoid of the conditionalities and hierarchies that define North–South flows of the same. Maussians and neo‐Maussians maintain that gifting—which allows for the ethos of reciprocity—leads to the formation of more equal international partnerships. This article focusses on India's development diplomacy. We unpack Indian cultural notions of ‘gifting’, which do not…
Moral geographies
This article seeks to understand the evolution of India’s political relations and development cooperation with Africa, in the context of India’s ambitions of playing a leading role in the Third World turned Global South. India’s development cooperation with African nations was informed in the early decades after the country’s independence by a sense of solidarity. It is argued that despite a sense of Third Worldist solidarity, Indian actors parti…
Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · International Development and Aid (4 works) · Social science (4 works)