A Talk on ‘Setting the House in Order: Housing Commission Reports and the Crisis of Social Reproduction, 1931-1939’ by Dr Nidhin Donald

ABOUT THE TALK
In this presentation, Dr Nidhin Donald will discuss ‘expert’ deliberations on the public health dimensions of the human dwelling in inter-war Europe and North America. Culled out from the Housing Commission Reports of the League of Nations Health Organization (hereinafter, LNHO) in the late 1930s, these deliberations play out in the backdrop of the great depression and pursuant expansion of the LNHO as an intergovernmental platform. Dr Donald will argue that two seemingly contradictory moves were evident in the Commission reports — on one hand, the human dwelling was conceptualised as a socio-spatial and economic determinant of health and on the other it was schooled as an essentially capital-driven commodity. The former, was a consequence of the rising influence of social medicine and collective working-class bargains which highlighted the spatial crisis of social reproduction and critiqued the profit-driven and speculative nature of the housing industry. The latter was a consequence of a consensus among experts about the inevitability of market-driven solutions in ‘solving’ the crisis of housing and health. He will argue that the bungled act of balancing the demands of labour and capital (also read imperialism), with an evident tilt towards the latter, has been a staple in health-housing deliberations in the LNHO and later the WHO, making housing a ‘wobbly pillar’ in transnational norm-making.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nidhin Donald is a sociologist with a keen interest in the study of historical materials. His doctoral thesis analysed Syrian Christian identity politics through a study of printed family histories (and their digital iterations) starting from the early 20th century. His publications revolve around questions of social reproduction of identities, popular historiography, migration, digital cultural objects, law, caste, Christianity, and Kerala. His work can be placed within a growing body of scholarship that highlights the complex, modern life of caste/s beyond Hinduism in South Asia. Before joining the Moturi Satyanarayana Centre at Krea University, Donald was an Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at IIT Bombay (2022-23) and Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lucerne (2023-24).