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UID:pretalx-wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026-TFHWB8@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=KST:20260627T141500
DTEND;TZID=KST:20260627T143500
DESCRIPTION:World history has often been written through narratives of ever
 -expanding connectivity—trade\, migration\, empire\, and exchange. Yet i
 n the Andaman–Nicobar Islands\, the Shompen people of Great Nicobar pres
 ent an alternative historical model: one of deliberate opacity\, non-discl
 osure\, and refusal. Long described as a “remote” or “vanishing” t
 ribe\, the Shompen have persistently resisted integration into the legal\,
  ethnographic\, and archival regimes of the Indian state. Their refusal is
  not merely political\, but ontological: a world-making stance that unsett
 les assumptions of transparency and assimilation as universal historical t
 rajectories.\n\nThis paper argues that the Shompen’s stance of refusal p
 rovides a critical vantage point from which to rethink world history in a 
 moment when globalization has faltered. Nationalism\, protectionism\, and 
 closed borders mark the present\, yet forms of interconnection remain—ec
 ological\, material\, and planetary. By reading the Shompen through framew
 orks of opacity and Indigenous sovereignty\, I propose that histories of i
 nterdiction and refusal are as world-historical as those of circulation an
 d exchange. The Shompen remind us that to “be global” is not always to
  be connected\; it can also mean to survive\, endure\, and persist at the 
 edges of globalizing projects.\n\nPlacing this case within Asian and India
 n Ocean contexts\, the paper suggests that histories of refusal illuminate
  new ways of conceptualizing borders\, sovereignty\, and interconnection b
 eyond globalization. Rather than marginal footnotes\, such refusals are ce
 ntral to world history’s task: to grapple with a planet that is at once 
 intensely entangled and unevenly open.
DTSTAMP:20260412T140529Z
LOCATION:Room 208 (Seats 40)
SUMMARY:Refusal as World History: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Limits of 
 Globalization in the Andaman–Nicobar - Surabhi Baijal
URL:https://pretalx.com/wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026/talk/TFHWB8/
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