Affective Solidarities is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and led by Dr Pascale
Schild. The project examines the formation of transnational solidarities through the lens of affect and
emotion in the context of the Kashmiri freedom movement. Combining three distinct fields of research
in social anthropology – sovereignty, solidarity and political affect – it advances the concept of
“affective solidarities” to trace the processes and conditions of freedom struggles and related
possibilities for political transformation. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Europe/the
USA and South Asia (Kashmir, India and Pakistan), the project team (consisting of the PI and the PhD
student) will explore how experiences of occupation and related desires for freedom and political selfdetermination
bring people to solidarity movements, and how practices of solidarity and experiences
of bridging differences in turn (re)shape notions of personal and political sovereignty.