Events

The Neighbourhood of the Brothel: Reflections from Fieldwork in a Small Town

Speaker:
Tridib Mukherjee, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

Tuesday, 24th March 2026, 3:45 PM IST onwards.

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Please register below to attend.

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About the talk
The town of Silchar, in India’s Northeast, houses the region’s only red light area for brothel based sex work. The red light area is located at the heart of the urban centre, surrounded by residential settlements and commercial establishments. Red light areas are often associated with their immoral and criminogenic influences by their neighbours, resulting in contestations over the use of space. While these tensions and the broader implications of spatial ordering have been well documented in metropolitan contexts, there remains a relative lack of scholarly attention to similar dynamics in smaller urban centres. This talk draws on my reflections as an ethnographer in Silchar, tracing the contested relationship between the brothel and its surrounding neighbourhood.

About the speaker
Tridib Mukherjee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and a Writing Tutor at the Centre for Writing and Communication, Ashoka University. Their doctoral work explores the relationship between urban space, morality, and governance in the context of sexual commerce in Silchar, Assam.