Call for Papers “National Seminar on “Sociology of/and River Traditions: Re-/reading Narratives of Northeast India”

National Seminar
On
Sociology of/and River Traditions: Re-/reading Narratives of Northeast India
(Special National Integration Seminar, IKS Series of ICSSR-NERC)

Organised by
ICSSR-NERC
NEHU Campus, Shillong – 793022
Date: 1st and 2nd September 2026
Venue: ICSSR-NERC Shillong

CALL FOR PAPERS

Concept Note

Water keeps life going. But rivers do more than sustaining the physical human body. Rivers shape how people live and the living experiences shape a worldview of the inhabitants. People living near the rivers grow into its rhythm of flow. Along a river, one can bathe, travel, work, pray, and mourn. They are also central to religious and ritual life. In many traditions even death returns to the river as a part of a larger passage of life and afterlife. Rivers are approached as sacred, as purifying, as spaces where the human and the divine meet. Pilgrimages, offerings, and daily practices return to the river again and again, though beliefs differ across traditions and still often hold reverence and fear together for rivers.

Yet the relationship between river and man is never untouched by society and its cultural structures. A river is never just a body of flowing liquid. A river is a part of everyday life and by being so, it becomes a part of the systems and structures of belief, cultures, and traditions. Access, ownership, and intervention of power — all shape how the river is experienced, understood, occupied, and represented. The same river that sustains life can also divide communities or become a site of control. In this sense, even if the river remains natural, but never outside culture or power structure when men intervene with it. Floods in the rivers disrupt human control, while the steady flow of water becomes a way of thinking about time and continuity.

In India, this connection between men and river carries a long history. Rivers have guided settlements, trades, and migrations, and they also live in language and memory. A single river can have many names, each tied to a place or as a way of being seen. Even the name of the country recalls a river (Indus), which shows how deeply rivers are tied to identity. At the same time, rivers move through stories, songs, films, and folklores, where they appear as both nurturing and destructive forces of nature, and as cultural forces of a community.

This seminar seeks to explore these layered meanings of rivers by bringing together their ecological, cultural, and political dimensions as presented in narratives and cultures from the perspectives of sociology and anthropology. It looks at how rivers have been re/presented across narratives, from myth and folklore to literature and visual media, and how these representations reflect changing relationships between human society and the natural world. It also will attempt to address the questions of migration, development, and ecological strain, where rivers become sites of conflict as much as continuity. By reading river traditions across disciplines and forms, the seminar aims to understand the river as a lived space, shaped by memory, belief, and power, and still open to new meanings all the time.

Sub-themes:
The seminar would primarily focus on presentations on the following themes/subthemes, though not restricted to them, with strict reference to sociology, human sciences, and northeast India:

  1. River as a social and cultural site
  2. River and identity
  3. River Pedagogy
  4. River and myth-making
  5. River cartography
  6. River Representation in literary writings
  7. River Representation in media
  8. River and Partition of 1947
  9. River and Wars
  10. River in Performative and visual art forms
  11. Gendering Rivers
  12. River in Children literatures
  13. Preservation of Rivers and river cultures
  14. River linguistics
  15. Flood and society

Important Dates:
Submission of Abstract: 20 July 2026 before 5pm
Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 24 July 2026
Submission of full paper: 20 August 2026.
Seminar: 1-2 Sept. 2026

Abstract/paper Guideline: Interested participants may send an abstract within 300 words with 5-7 key-words and a brief bio-note within 100 words to <icssrnerc@gmail.com>

The paper should be of 5000 words (approx.) following the latest MLA format of reference. Kindly send them in MS Word format through email to mailarzuman@gmail.com. Kindly adhere to the current UGC plagiarism policies. Submission of the full paper within the due date is mandatory.

Registration:

  1. There are no participation fees and registration fees for the seminar. All the presenters will be pre-registered through correspondence with the coordinator. There will be NO on-spot registration. Experts will be contacted separately by the coordinator.
  2. ICSSR-NERC will provide lunch, working tea, and certificates of participation.

Accommodation: Participants will have to make their own arrangements for travel and accommodation.  ICSSR-NERC will not pay any TA/DA to the participants.

Coordinator:  Dr. Arzuman Ara, Associate Professor, EFL University, Shillong-22
Phone: 7085086371. Email: mailarzuman@gmail.com / arzumanara@efluniversity.ac.in

Copyright: ICSSR-NEC will have the copyright for all the presentations.

Publication: The papers will be published in an edited book form.

For Further communication:
Convenor: Prof. B. Panda, ICSSR-NERC, Email: <icssrnerc@gmail.com>
Coordinator: Dr. Arzuman Ara, Ph. 7085086371, Email: arzumanara@efluniversity.ac.in
Ms. Jerusha Nongpluh, Ph. 9366814384 Email: icssrnerc@gmail.com

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