N Manchanda
Biographic Data
| ID | 44537 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Manchanda |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Manchanda |
| SIGNATURE | MANCHANDA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2852-9577 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Thinking World Politics Otherwise: A Diverse Introduction to International Relations
Democracy, diversity, and disavowal: Tracing colonial lineages in India’s long wars
This article explores India’s ‘long wars’ – the counter-insurgency campaigns the state imposed on recalcitrant populations and territories. Existing critical debates have focused on colonial and imperial counter-insurgency waged by developed Western states and empires. Yet these powers hardly command a monopoly on how these are fought, rationalised, or imagined. Indian counter-insurgency campaigns are a key case in point. The aftermath of British…
The Moving Spirit of Settler Colonialism: Temsula Ao, Counter-Sovereignty, and the Politics of Intervention in the Borderlands of India
This paper investigates the incursions, or more accurately, the interventions of the Indian state into what are often called its “Northeast borderlands.” It grapples with the specific space occupied by those who belong to this minoritized region in India. Theoretically, it works through conceptions of “sovereignty” and “intervention” to underscore what is at stake for those who lie within the remit of recognized state sovereignty but are nonethel…
From frontier-making to world-making: The enduring power of frontiers in South Asia
This article examines the social and geopolitical power of frontiers. For some, frontiers are viewed relatively narrowly as markers of physical territory, and as relics of a past imperial age. We build on ‘critical’ or ‘revisionist’ frontier study which sees frontiers as persistent and regenerative forces of social practice that give meaning to the landscape and its inhabitants. With a focus on South Asia, and India's Northeast in particular, we …
Nomads' Land: Exploring the Social and Political Life of the Nomad Category
The category of the nomad has gained a newfound salience in recent decades, ranging from public interest in 'digital nomadism' to academic debates about 'nomadic theory.' Faced with this upsurge of interest in nomadism, this collective discussion brings together five scholars of diverse theoretical and academic backgrounds to investigate the pasts, presents, and possible futures of the nomad category. The contributions excavate the conditions und…
Anglotopia and the limits of the white imaginary
Response to the reviewers: On imagining Afghanistan
Response to the reviewers: on imagining Afghanistan." Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(3), pp. 401–402
Between mobile corridors and immobilizing borders: Race, fixity and friction in Palestine/Israel
This article wrestles with the question of 'national' borders in racial capitalism. We do so through an examination of border and capitalist corridors. We focus particularly on the Israeli border, branded and then sold to the rest of the world by the epistemic community of border-makers and interlocutors. In tracking the Israeli border and showing the implication of the experts and their markets, we ask how the border reflects and is refracted th…
The lure of racist democracy
This review article examines the current political landscape to show the ways in which Mondon and Winter’s Reactionary Democracy is a chilling indictment of our contemporary present. It argues that the far-right is often used as a red herring to distract from the banality of liberalism’s racism. It goes on to show that this need not be the case, but for that we have to learn from revolutionary movements like the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 19…
Resisting racial militarism: War, policing and the Black Panther Party
The past ten years have witnessed a revival in scholarship on militarism, through which scholars have used the concept to make sense of the embeddedness of warlike relations in contemporary liberal societies and to account for how the social, political and economic contours of those same societies are implicated in the legitimation and organization of political violence. However, a persistent shortcoming has been the secondary role of race and co…
The banalization of race in international security studies: From absolution to abolition
The Guns of August: Afghanistan 2021: Framing Nivi Manchanda's Imagining Afghanistan
The Guns of August: Afghanistan 2021:Framing Nivi Manchanda's Imagining Afghanistan Antoinette Burton, Zarena Aslami, Kate Imy, Elisabeth Leake, and Nivi Manchanda Antoinette Burton University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Rahman: It is a kind of strange magic you believe in, with these maps... you are a complicated man. I respect that in you. But I beg you not to try to force the world into a shape it cannot take... Afghanistan. Durand: If that'…
Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge
Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space, and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In this innovative examination, Nivi Manchanda uncovers and critically explores Anglophone practices of knowledge cultivation and representational strategies, and argues that Afghanistan occupie…
Empire's h(a)unting grounds: Theorising violence and resistance in Egypt and Afghanistan
This article thinks theory otherwise by searching for what is missing, silent and yet highly productive and constitutive of present realities. Looking at Afghanistan and Egypt, the authors show how imperial legacies and capitalist futurities are rendered invisible by dominant social theories, and why it matters that we think beyond an empiricist sociology in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the authors explore the ways in which portrayals of the …
Whither race in planetary governance? A response to Stephen Gill
This piece centres the question of race in global governance. It responds to Stephen Gill's ‘Towards Planetary Governance’ in this forum and highlights the relative absence of questions of race and colonialism from his analysis. Race and racism must be analysed as constitutive of ecological crises, if we are serious about mitigating or controlling climate disaster
The Graveyard of Empires: Haunting, Amnesia and Afghanistan’s Construction as a Burial Site
Afghanistan appears to exist in a different time from ‘us.’ Modernization theory, linear narratives of progress, teleological tales of growth and common sense stories of development seem to have met their match when it comes to this landlocked country. This paper considers the ubiquitous construction of Afghanistan as the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ to explore the ways in which representation, memory-making, and an allegory of mythic import perform a …
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race." African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(3), pp. 318–319
The Imperial Sociology of the ‘Tribe’ in Afghanistan
The ‘tribe’ is a notion intimately related to the study of Afghanistan, used as a generic signifier for all things Afghan, it is through this notion that the co-constitution of coloniser and colonised is crystallised and foregrounded in Afghanistan. By tracing the way in which the term ‘tribe’ has been deployed in the Afghan context, the article performs two kinds of intellectual labour. First, by following the evolution of a concept from its use…
Queering the Pashtun: Afghan sexuality in the homo-nationalist imaginary
A certain, pathologised image of the Afghan man now dominates the mainstream Western imaginary. This article interrogates representations of Pashtun males in Anglophone media, arguing that these representations are embedded in an Orientalist, homo-nationalist framework. Through a specific focus on the construction of the Taliban as sexually deviant, (improperly) homosexual men, the paper underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in the…
Queering the Pashtun: Afghan sexuality in the homo-nationalist imaginary
A certain, pathologised image of the Afghan man now dominates the mainstream Western imaginary. This article interrogates representations of Pashtun males in Anglophone media, arguing that these representations are embedded in an Orientalist, homo-nationalist framework. Through a specific focus on the construction of the Taliban as sexually deviant, (improperly) homosexual men, the paper underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in the…
Resisting racial militarism: War, policing and the Black Panther Party
The past ten years have witnessed a revival in scholarship on militarism, through which scholars have used the concept to make sense of the embeddedness of warlike relations in contemporary liberal societies and to account for how the social, political and economic contours of those same societies are implicated in the legitimation and organization of political violence. However, a persistent shortcoming has been the secondary role of race and co…
The Imperial Sociology of the ‘Tribe’ in Afghanistan
The ‘tribe’ is a notion intimately related to the study of Afghanistan, used as a generic signifier for all things Afghan, it is through this notion that the co-constitution of coloniser and colonised is crystallised and foregrounded in Afghanistan. By tracing the way in which the term ‘tribe’ has been deployed in the Afghan context, the article performs two kinds of intellectual labour. First, by following the evolution of a concept from its use…
Between mobile corridors and immobilizing borders: Race, fixity and friction in Palestine/Israel
This article wrestles with the question of 'national' borders in racial capitalism. We do so through an examination of border and capitalist corridors. We focus particularly on the Israeli border, branded and then sold to the rest of the world by the epistemic community of border-makers and interlocutors. In tracking the Israeli border and showing the implication of the experts and their markets, we ask how the border reflects and is refracted th…
The banalization of race in international security studies: From absolution to abolition
The Moving Spirit of Settler Colonialism: Temsula Ao, Counter-Sovereignty, and the Politics of Intervention in the Borderlands of India
This paper investigates the incursions, or more accurately, the interventions of the Indian state into what are often called its “Northeast borderlands.” It grapples with the specific space occupied by those who belong to this minoritized region in India. Theoretically, it works through conceptions of “sovereignty” and “intervention” to underscore what is at stake for those who lie within the remit of recognized state sovereignty but are nonethel…
From frontier-making to world-making: The enduring power of frontiers in South Asia
This article examines the social and geopolitical power of frontiers. For some, frontiers are viewed relatively narrowly as markers of physical territory, and as relics of a past imperial age. We build on ‘critical’ or ‘revisionist’ frontier study which sees frontiers as persistent and regenerative forces of social practice that give meaning to the landscape and its inhabitants. With a focus on South Asia, and India's Northeast in particular, we …
Empire's h(a)unting grounds: Theorising violence and resistance in Egypt and Afghanistan
This article thinks theory otherwise by searching for what is missing, silent and yet highly productive and constitutive of present realities. Looking at Afghanistan and Egypt, the authors show how imperial legacies and capitalist futurities are rendered invisible by dominant social theories, and why it matters that we think beyond an empiricist sociology in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the authors explore the ways in which portrayals of the …
The Graveyard of Empires: Haunting, Amnesia and Afghanistan’s Construction as a Burial Site
Afghanistan appears to exist in a different time from ‘us.’ Modernization theory, linear narratives of progress, teleological tales of growth and common sense stories of development seem to have met their match when it comes to this landlocked country. This paper considers the ubiquitous construction of Afghanistan as the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ to explore the ways in which representation, memory-making, and an allegory of mythic import perform a …
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race." African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(3), pp. 318–319
Queering the Pashtun: Afghan sexuality in the homo-nationalist imaginary
A certain, pathologised image of the Afghan man now dominates the mainstream Western imaginary. This article interrogates representations of Pashtun males in Anglophone media, arguing that these representations are embedded in an Orientalist, homo-nationalist framework. Through a specific focus on the construction of the Taliban as sexually deviant, (improperly) homosexual men, the paper underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in the…
The Imperial Sociology of the ‘Tribe’ in Afghanistan
The ‘tribe’ is a notion intimately related to the study of Afghanistan, used as a generic signifier for all things Afghan, it is through this notion that the co-constitution of coloniser and colonised is crystallised and foregrounded in Afghanistan. By tracing the way in which the term ‘tribe’ has been deployed in the Afghan context, the article performs two kinds of intellectual labour. First, by following the evolution of a concept from its use…
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race
The earth, the city and the hidden narrative of race." African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(3), pp. 318–319
Whither race in planetary governance? A response to Stephen Gill
This piece centres the question of race in global governance. It responds to Stephen Gill's ‘Towards Planetary Governance’ in this forum and highlights the relative absence of questions of race and colonialism from his analysis. Race and racism must be analysed as constitutive of ecological crises, if we are serious about mitigating or controlling climate disaster
The Graveyard of Empires: Haunting, Amnesia and Afghanistan’s Construction as a Burial Site
Afghanistan appears to exist in a different time from ‘us.’ Modernization theory, linear narratives of progress, teleological tales of growth and common sense stories of development seem to have met their match when it comes to this landlocked country. This paper considers the ubiquitous construction of Afghanistan as the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ to explore the ways in which representation, memory-making, and an allegory of mythic import perform a …
Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge
Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space, and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In this innovative examination, Nivi Manchanda uncovers and critically explores Anglophone practices of knowledge cultivation and representational strategies, and argues that Afghanistan occupie…
Empire's h(a)unting grounds: Theorising violence and resistance in Egypt and Afghanistan
This article thinks theory otherwise by searching for what is missing, silent and yet highly productive and constitutive of present realities. Looking at Afghanistan and Egypt, the authors show how imperial legacies and capitalist futurities are rendered invisible by dominant social theories, and why it matters that we think beyond an empiricist sociology in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the authors explore the ways in which portrayals of the …
The lure of racist democracy
This review article examines the current political landscape to show the ways in which Mondon and Winter’s Reactionary Democracy is a chilling indictment of our contemporary present. It argues that the far-right is often used as a red herring to distract from the banality of liberalism’s racism. It goes on to show that this need not be the case, but for that we have to learn from revolutionary movements like the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 19…
Resisting racial militarism: War, policing and the Black Panther Party
The past ten years have witnessed a revival in scholarship on militarism, through which scholars have used the concept to make sense of the embeddedness of warlike relations in contemporary liberal societies and to account for how the social, political and economic contours of those same societies are implicated in the legitimation and organization of political violence. However, a persistent shortcoming has been the secondary role of race and co…
The banalization of race in international security studies: From absolution to abolition
The Guns of August: Afghanistan 2021: Framing Nivi Manchanda's Imagining Afghanistan
The Guns of August: Afghanistan 2021:Framing Nivi Manchanda's Imagining Afghanistan Antoinette Burton, Zarena Aslami, Kate Imy, Elisabeth Leake, and Nivi Manchanda Antoinette Burton University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Rahman: It is a kind of strange magic you believe in, with these maps... you are a complicated man. I respect that in you. But I beg you not to try to force the world into a shape it cannot take... Afghanistan. Durand: If that'…
Response to the reviewers: On imagining Afghanistan
Response to the reviewers: on imagining Afghanistan." Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(3), pp. 401–402
Between mobile corridors and immobilizing borders: Race, fixity and friction in Palestine/Israel
This article wrestles with the question of 'national' borders in racial capitalism. We do so through an examination of border and capitalist corridors. We focus particularly on the Israeli border, branded and then sold to the rest of the world by the epistemic community of border-makers and interlocutors. In tracking the Israeli border and showing the implication of the experts and their markets, we ask how the border reflects and is refracted th…
Anglotopia and the limits of the white imaginary
The Moving Spirit of Settler Colonialism: Temsula Ao, Counter-Sovereignty, and the Politics of Intervention in the Borderlands of India
This paper investigates the incursions, or more accurately, the interventions of the Indian state into what are often called its “Northeast borderlands.” It grapples with the specific space occupied by those who belong to this minoritized region in India. Theoretically, it works through conceptions of “sovereignty” and “intervention” to underscore what is at stake for those who lie within the remit of recognized state sovereignty but are nonethel…
From frontier-making to world-making: The enduring power of frontiers in South Asia
This article examines the social and geopolitical power of frontiers. For some, frontiers are viewed relatively narrowly as markers of physical territory, and as relics of a past imperial age. We build on ‘critical’ or ‘revisionist’ frontier study which sees frontiers as persistent and regenerative forces of social practice that give meaning to the landscape and its inhabitants. With a focus on South Asia, and India's Northeast in particular, we …
Nomads' Land: Exploring the Social and Political Life of the Nomad Category
The category of the nomad has gained a newfound salience in recent decades, ranging from public interest in 'digital nomadism' to academic debates about 'nomadic theory.' Faced with this upsurge of interest in nomadism, this collective discussion brings together five scholars of diverse theoretical and academic backgrounds to investigate the pasts, presents, and possible futures of the nomad category. The contributions excavate the conditions und…
Thinking World Politics Otherwise: A Diverse Introduction to International Relations
Democracy, diversity, and disavowal: Tracing colonial lineages in India’s long wars
This article explores India’s ‘long wars’ – the counter-insurgency campaigns the state imposed on recalcitrant populations and territories. Existing critical debates have focused on colonial and imperial counter-insurgency waged by developed Western states and empires. Yet these powers hardly command a monopoly on how these are fought, rationalised, or imagined. Indian counter-insurgency campaigns are a key case in point. The aftermath of British…
Political science (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Politics (11 works) · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Colonialism (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · History (6 works)