Mahmudul H Sumon Professor, Department of Anthropology
PROFILE
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Mahmudul H Sumon, Professor of Anthropology, is a social anthropologist whose research interests include questions such as how people construct their social-cultural worlds and identities. He has explored these questions, particularly amongst a group of communities in Bangladesh that have hitherto been known or categorized as “tribes” or “aboriginals” in colonial laws, policies, and academic discourses. He critically investigates knowledge politics in making “adivasis” and how it unfolds today within the transnational field of power/ knowledge and articulations on indigeneity.
After training in anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, he took up a lectureship in the newly established anthropology department at Rajshahi University before returning to his alma mater in 2002. His primary ethnographic research involved fieldwork amongst a group, platform, and network of people organized in the name of “Adivasi”. The fieldwork began around 2002-3 and culminated in a doctoral degree from the University of Kent in 2014. He conducted fieldwork in north-western Bangladesh, the central northern Madhupur area, and the Nadda Kalachandpur area in Dhaka. After his doctoral work, he has also pursued an interest in Bangladesh’s garments sector and increasingly found himself in understanding its politics of governance.
Sumon’s co-edited books include Ādibāsī āche? …āche! (Saṃbed: Ḍhākā. 2014) and Jarip theke bayān (Saṃbed: Ḍhākā. 2014). His most recent book is titled Ethnicity and adivasi politics in Bangladesh (Routledge 2022).
For his doctoral studies at Kent, he received the Overseas Research Scholarship Awards Scheme. His collaborative research with scholars at the University of Sussex looked at the politics of compensation in the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013. He also worked with icddr,b on projects concerning working-class women and their pandemic preparedness in Dhaka and Gazipur.
He has received several research grants from Bangladesh’s University Grants Commission. His most recent study examines the changing landscape of technology use among the working-class people in Dhaka.
Dr. Mahmudul Sumon teaches various courses: Anthropological Theory and Advanced Methodology for MPhil and PhD students, South Asian Histories, Cultures and Societies, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Identity, Visual Media and Cultural Changes, and Other Cultures. He is a member of the Development Studies Association and has participated in several Association of Social Anthropologists conferences.
Also, see:
https://juniv.academia.edu/MahmudulSumon
RESEARCH INTEREST
Ethnic politics, feminism, transnationalism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonial, neoliberal development, visual culture and politics, visual anthropology, experimental ethnography, etc.
JOURNAL PAPER
Social Protection as Technocratic Fix?: Labour Precarity and Crises of Capitalism after Bangladesh's Rana Plaza Collapse, Journal of Labor and Society, 2023.What do we learn from hybrid governance in Bangladesh’s garments sector?, FocaalBlog, 2022.
An anonymous visit to a garment factory in Bangladesh, FocaalBlog, 217.
Everyday violence of female garments workers in Bangladesh, The Jahangirnagar Review: Part II Social Sciences, 2019.
Multi-sectoral Initiative: A critical overview of the Accord in Bangladesh, The Jahangirnagar University Journal of Business Research, 2020.
“SāmpradāẏikꞋtā niẏe ekꞋṭi manolog”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 16, pp.107-116, 2011.
“Why refer to the Hindus in Bangladesh as “minority”?”, Politeja. The Journal of the Faculty of International and Political Studies, 40, 1, pp.341-348, 2016.
“‘Feeling of loss’: Ethnicity, ethnographic imagination and identity work of Mandi/ Garo youth in Dhaka”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 22, pp.59-79, 2017.
“Upanibeś, ethanikꞋsattā ebaṃ pratirodh: prekśita bāṃlādeś”, Nṛbijñān Patrikā, 23, pp.1-10,
CONFERENCE PAPER
What university we wish to have: Neoliberal transformation of Bangladesh’s public universities, London, UK, 2023.BOOK
Ethnicity and adivasi politics in Bangladesh. Routledge., 2022. doi: 10.4324/b23270Ādibāsī āche? …āche! Ādibāsī nām bitarker prabandha saṃkalan. Saṃbed: Ḍhākā., 2014.
Jarip theke bayān: Bāṃlādeś rāṣṭrer uttar-paścimāṅcaler prāntik jātisattār mānuṣer bhūmi samasyākendrik samīkṣā o baẏān. Saṃbed: Ḍhākā, 2014.
BOOK CHAPTER
"Informal" Labour in COVID-19: An Annotated Diary Entry from Dhaka, 2023.Rereading Palamau: Bengali self and the “primitive within” in the Time of Colony. Dhaka: Novel Publishing House., pp.109-118, 2015.
Ethnicity, Ethnographic Imagination, and Identity Construction of Mandi Youth in Dhaka. Dhaka: UPL 2022., 2022.
“Discourses of compensation and the normalization of negligence: The experience of the Tazreen factory fire”. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2017, pp.147-172, 2017.
OTHER
Politics of recognition of ‘adivasis’ in Bangladesh, 2024.All the ‘skill talk’ in university education, The Daily Star, 2024.
Call for justice beyond compensation, New Age, 2021.
Activity
Position: Professor
Period: 2018-
Contact
Mahmudul H Sumon
Professor
Department of Anthropology
Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka-1342, Bangladesh.
Cell Phone: +8801727521602
Email: sumonmahmud@juniv.edu
, sumonmahmud@hotmail.com
