Dr. Jürgen Schaflechner is a research group leader at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universtät Berlin. He and his team study the political and social movements of religious minorities in South Asia in the advent of social media and communicative capitalism. Jürgen’s research and teaching cover cultural and post-colonial theory, the religious and ethnic minorities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the socio-anthropology of martial arts, and the role of documentary film in ethnographic research.

His books include: Hinglaj Devi. Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan (OUP 2018), Ritual Journeys (Routledge 2019, coedited with Christoph Bergmann), and Pakistan. Alternative Imaginings of the Nation-State (OUP 2020, coedited with Ayesha Asif and Christina Oesterheld).

In collaboration with Max Kramer, Jürgen is the editor-in-chief of the journal Dastavezi—The Audio-Visual South Asia. Dastaveziis an international peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal, which seeks to reposition film as a central mode of knowing and thinking about South Asia. Its submissions connect academic texts and audio-visual material to make conceptual or empirical contributions to scholarship on and from South Asia. The journal is found here: https://crossasia-journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dasta/index

Jürgen has also filmed, edited, and produced six documentary films on topics such as the alleged forced conversion of Hindu women to Islam in Sindh, the life-worlds of Pakistani Hindu refugees in India, and the sacrificial rites amongst the Devapujak-Vagri community in Karachi. His latest film, The Toxic Reigns of Resentment (2019), deals with the culture of resentment in today’s politics. The film features interviews with Wendy Brown, Rahel Jaeggi, and Peter Sloterdijk, among others.

Jürgen had visiting appointments at several universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and Hebrew University. His research and films can be found at www.juergen-schaflechner.com.

 

Current Research Project:

POPULISM OF THE PRECARIOUS, MARGINALIZATION, MOBILIZATION, AND MEDIATIZATION OF SOUTH ASIA’S RELIGIOUS MINORITIES.

How do religiously discriminated communities in India and Pakistan become political actors in the 21st century? How does the role of the digital in everyday life change the establishment and sustainability of religious minorities' social movements in transnational and local publics and, in fact, their attempts to emerge as ‘the people'? And what can case-studies of politically active religious minorities in South Asia contribute to recent discussions on the global rise of populism—whose analysis, so far, has been dominated by European and American examples? On the basis of these and other key questions, this project aims to extend studies on the current life-worlds of religious minorities in India and Pakistan, social media's influence on today's South Asian political landscapes, and, crucially, the nexus of populism and religion in its effort to produce concepts of citizenship and ‘the people.'

BOOKS

2018 Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press.
 

EDITED BOOKS

2020 Pakistan. Parallel Narratives of the Nation-State, eds. Ayesha Asif, Christina Oesterheld & Jürgen Schaflechner. Karachi: Oxford University Press.

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2019 Ritual Journeys, eds. Christoph Bergmann & Jürgen Schaflechner. London et al.: Routledge.

JOURNAL ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Forth. “A specter is hunting Pakistan! Nationalism in Pakistan’s horror pulp fiction” In Asian Ethnology (80) 1-2.

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2020 “Blasphemy accusations as extreme speech acts in Pakistan” in Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech. eds. Udupa, Sahana, Iginio Gagliardone and Peter Hervik. Indiana University Press.

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2020 “Hinglaj Devi ‘solidifying’ Hindu identity at a Hindu temple in Pakistan.” In American Anthropologist.

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2020 “Betwixt and between: Hindu identity in Pakistan and ‘wary and aware’ public performances” In Journal of South Asian Studies (43).

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2020 “Introduction” in Pakistan. Parallel Narratives of the Nation-State, eds. Christina Oesterheld & Jürgen Schaflechner. Karachi: Oxford University Press.

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2020 “Forced conversion and (Hindu) women’s agency in Sindh” republished in Pakistan. Parallel Narratives of the Nation-State, eds. Christina Oesterheld & Jürgen Schaflechner. Karachi: Oxford University Press

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2019 “Blasphemy and the appropriation of vigilante justice in ‘hagiohistoric’ writing in Pakistan” in Outrage The Rise of Offence in Contemporary South Asia, eds. Kathinka Frøystad, Paul Rollier, & Arild Engelsen Ruud. London: UCL Press.

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2019 “Between documentary and dastavezi” (with Max Kramer) In Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia. (1). 1–12.

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2019 “Introduction: ritual journeys in South Asia” (with Christoph Bergmann) in Ritual Journeys, eds. Christoph Bergmann & Jürgen Schaflechner. London et al.: Routledge.

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2019 “Hinduism in Pakistan” in Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism. Ed. Tracy Coleman. New York: Oxford University Press.

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2019 “Making Hinduism: A case of governmentality at Hinglaj” in Ritual Journeys, eds. Christoph Bergmann & Jürgen Schaflechner. London et al.: Routledge.

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2017 “Forced conversion and (Hindu) women’s agency in Sindh” in South Asia Chronicle. (7). Berlin. 275–317.

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2016 “‘The Hindu’ in recent Urdu horror stories from Pakistan” in Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien. (32). Bremen: Hempen Verlag. (peer reviewed). 323–35.

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2016 “What is lacking in the law on forced conversion” in The Herald, December issue. Karachi.

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2015 “The mother and the other” in Muslim Wanderers in South Asia, eds. Michel Boivin & Remy Delage. London et al.: Routledge. (peer reviewed).

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2015 “Denial and repetition: the solidification of tradition” in The Ambivalence of Denial. What’s Behind Denying Ritual?, eds. Ute Hüsken & Udo Simon. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

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2015 “Royal Asiatic Society” in Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte,ed. Hermann Hiery. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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2015 “Hinduism” (with Hans Hommes) in Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte,ed. Hermann Hiery. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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2015 “Economy of sacrifice: The Vagris of Karachi” in The Karachi Conference, ed. Sabiah Askari. Karachi: Cambridge Scholars Publishers.

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2014 “The shrine of Hinglaj Devi” in The Herald, October issue. Karachi.

JOURNALS

2020 Dastavezi, The Audio-Visual South Asia. Issue (2). Editor in Chief (with Max Kramer).

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2019 Dastavezi, The Audio-Visual South Asia. Issue (1). Editor in Chief (with Max Kramer).

DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Published full-length films found at www.juergen-schaflechner.com/films/

 

2019 The Toxic Reigns of Resentment (52 min) Bullfrog Film Distribution, PA.
Screened at: Princeton University, Yale University, New School (New York City), Erasmus University (Rotterdam), Hebrew University (Israel), University of Amsterdam

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2016 Thrust into Heaven (66 min)
Selected at: Sindhi Film Festival (Paris, 2016); SoSe Film Festival (Jerewan, 2017)

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2015 There they call us Hindus. here we are Pakistanis (52 min)
Selected at: FIFEQ (Quebec, 2014); Bir Duino Human Rights Film Festival (Bishkek, 2014); Ethnocineca (Vienna, 2015)

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2013Mother Calling. Kali in Karachi (45 min)
Selected at: FiFEQ (Quebec, 2014); One With a Movie Camera (Marburg, 2013); Music Mela, (Islamabad, 2015); I am Karachi (Karachi, 2015)

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2012 Fakeera. An Unexceptional Story (8 min)
Selected at: Short on Work (Modena, 2012); Ethnocineca (Vienna, 2013)

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2011 …on Becoming Gods (43 min)
Screened at: University Heidelberg; University of Vienna

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2010 Agneya Tirtha Hinglaj (28 min)
Screened at: University Heidelberg