Dr. Aiman Mustafa has studied the socio-cultural processes that go into the historically changing nature of ethnic and national groups. He has examined how such processes are boundary forming and enable the “us-them” distinctions at the core of group formation. His interdisciplinary orientation speaks to the concerns of anthropology, sociology, legal studies, and history to explain the cultural politics that mark inter-group dynamics including those of modern nation-states.
Dr. Mustafa has conducted nearly a decade long ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai, with brief interludes in Delhi and Hyderabad. As part of his fieldwork, he has extensively worked in a range of settings and organisations—news rooms, socio-religious, feminist, political parties, and courtrooms. Parts of his field materials formed the basis for his dissertation research in Cultural Anthropology undertaken at Emory University. His dissertation fieldwork research won an international grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. He is currently developing his previous research into a book project, In the Shadow of the Majority: Cultural Politics, Community, and State-Formation in Postcolonial Mumbai.
At NALSAR, Dr. Mustafa’s teaching interests focus on the intersection of his previous research and on the social study of processes of norm-making, of which modern legal systems are a particular kind. He is currently teaching introductory sociology, and sociology of law to undergraduate students. His current teaching has informed a developing interest in issues of legal pluralism, gender, and ethnic identity.
Prior to joining NALSAR he has taught undergraduate students at Emory University, Atlanta, and M.A. and B.A. courses at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His work engages with debates in social theory, state-formation, ethnic studies, gender, mass media, political economy, and democracy.