CHANDAN BOSE

Research Areas

Queer sexuality
Sex, intimacy and relationality
Sexual behaviour
Transgender health
Craft production in contemporary India
Heritage and Museums

Courses

Introduction to Queer Studies
Qualitative Research Methods
Visual Anthropology
Contemporary India
Cultures of Digital Gaming

“People are desperate for intimacy”: ‘Intimacy Urgencies’ and ‘Doing Trust’—How do Grindr users Respond to Risks of Violence in Contemporary India? - Sexuality & CultureThis article is situated within larger research on crime and queer intimate economy in contemporary India. Specifically, the article focuses on how users of popular queer dating applications like Grindr manage their anxieties about risk while seeking intimacy through the application. Participants in this study acknowledged that it is their inability to manage and discipline ‘intimacy urgencies’ that causes a lapse in their judgement, and expose them to risk. Consequently, users devise their own rituals, processes and routines to ‘do trust’, and secure a safe environment for sexual intimacy, devoid of violence and abuse. However, the technological affordances that Grindr provides users to ‘do trust’ entail seeking social, educational, economic and cultural legibility and sameness. For example, users ‘trust’ those who link their allied social media profiles like Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to their Grindr profile. This article examines how users with limited ‘digital capital’ that legitimise participation in neoliberal forms of consumerism, pop culture and professionalism are perceived as being unsafe. ‘Doing Trust’ on Grindr in contemporary India is a way to seek ‘sameness’, a familiarity that is felt and known through caste and class habitus and privilege.

Email: chandanbose@la.iith.ac.in

Office: B-218, Academic Block B
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy
Telangana

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