Smita Lahiri

I study the nation as the product of collective cultural imagination and local action in South and Southeast Asia. My primary approach is ethnographic (i.e. based on fieldwork and personal immersion), and is informed by historical research and social theory. I have conducted long-term fieldwork in a community at the foot of Mt. Banahaw in the Philippines, where, for the past two centuries, people have built and circulated associations between the local landscape and Biblical places such as Christ’s road to Calvary. My writings on this subject comprise several essays and a book (in progress) that brings together a number of themes, from the role played by place-based attachments and identities in motivating citizen mobilization to the utopian resonances of a Philippine Holy Land assembled across local, national, and transnational scales. Currently, I’m expanding my contributions to the study of “everyday nationalism” to new topics and settings in the context of urban India. My ongoing projects include investigations of multilingual media, financial inclusion, and everyday money management amongst low and middle income residents of Delhi.