Imperceptible Politics of “the Crowd,” with Anthropologist Nusrat Chowdhury

In this episode of Global Stage, anthropologist Nusrat Chowdhury discusses her critical analysis of Bangladeshi “chhatra-janata” or student-people in popular protests, slogans, and graffiti that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024. In conversation with Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate and sociologist Eisar Haider, she reflects on “crowd politics” of social movements beyond the generational differences in social movements, and the links between “signature” infrastructure projects and authoritarian populism. Chowdhury also describes the forms of resistance in language and the subaltern sources she noticed when undertaking ethnographic methods in her fieldwork.