The more than half a century long armed conflicts in the Northeast of India have created a condition of existence in the region that is often described in pathological terms like ‘crisis’ or ‘disorder’. Such diagnostic attitude towards the region invites ‘solutions’ to ‘fix’ it. This has result in increasing militarization of the region on the one hand and opening up markets on the other. In the rush for a ‘solution’ we might have denied intelligibility to the everyday life of people in the region. The report examines some of the creative ways in which people constantly navigate and negotiate a field of contesting powers. In 2000, Hindi films were banned by militant Manipuri nationalist groups in an effort to stop what they have called the process of Indianization. The report explores the circumstances in which the ban took place as well as the trajectories that the ban has taken. In this engagement with the ban, the report uncovers that any attempt, by the Indian state as well as the militant Manipuri nationalist, to put bodies in fixed categories is often frustrated and negotiated in everyday practices. / text

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-174).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-174).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-174).

This dissertation explores some of the ways in which precarity takes form in a reeling present. Many social and political analysts have described the contemporary socio-economic and political situation in the Northeastern states of India, marked by a situation of civil war for more than half-a-century, as an “impasse.” With particular focus on Manipur, one of the eight Northeastern states, this dissertation looks at some of the ways in which people live through this “impasse.” Through a series of extraordinary and ordinary scenes, brief encounters, public testimonies, biographical sketches and autobiographical accounts it speaks of the precariousness of life, relationships, rituals and cultural categories even as people suffer and respond to the ongoing “crisis” of law and order, a defining feature of the “impasse.” Inspired by the affective turn in Critical Theory, this dissertation does not see precarity as necessarily traumatizing, thereby keeping the trope of trauma at a critical distance while attending to the lives of people in a situation of low-intensity armed conflict of long duration. It does not claim to provide any final explanation of what is happening in Manipur today rather it offers an innovative way to revisit anew some of the old anthropological questions about people and places undergoing dramatic changes. / text

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1994. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-205).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-240).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-240).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, Or., 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-212).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, Or., 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-212).