We invite you to join us for the launch of "Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking", a publication emerging from our international research seminar The Shifting Geographies of Expertise and Policymaking. This seminar brought together 12 scholars and practitioners from India, China, and beyond to explore expertise and policymaking across fields including energy, public health, education, housing, pandemic responses, and rural and urban development. The book is edited by Professors Manjari Mahajan and Mark W. Frazier, Co-Directors of the India China Institute. 

"Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking" explores what kinds of knowledge and knowledge purveyors get mobilized and privileged, and what gets sidelined in policymaking in India and China. Through its detailed empirical studies in both countries, the volume illuminates a trend of increasing concentration of political authority which has frequently demanded that experts be aligned with the central government's agenda. 

The first panel, on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 9:00am EST, will focus on expertise that is embedded within a state bureaucracy and executive. The cases from India and China point to the need for new conceptual categories that break down established binaries between political and epistemic authority that have dominated much of the debate and theorization about expertise.

SPEAKERS

Rohit Chandra

Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology

"Pushing and Pulling: Institutional Underpinnings of Energy Transitions in India and China" 

Ka-Kin Cheuk

Assistant Professor in Anthropology, University of Southampton

"Beyond Local State Corporatism and Entrepreneurial Political Selves: A Governance Assemblage Perspective on the Management of Foreigners in a Chinese County"

Loraine Kennedy

CNRS Research Director, Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies (CESAH), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris

"Policy-making and Expertise in Telangana State: Mediating Knowledge and Interests in Pursuit of Economic Development and Social Justice in Hyderabad"

Wenjuan Zhang

Professor and Associate Dean (International Collaboration), Jindal global Law School (on leave); Senior Counsel, Beijing Zhicheng Law Firm

"Divergence of Universal Elementary Education Policy Implementation Measurement and the Culture of Expertise in India and China" 

Yu Zhou

Professor of Geography and Chair of Earth Science and Geography, Vassar College

"Knowledge and Power: China's High-tech Industry and the Perils of a Shifting Global Knowledge Hierarchy"