The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of contention between Adivasi communities, like the Munda, and the national government. This is a relationship between these communities and centralized, outside power that has existed for centuries in different forms. To understand this ongoing conflict, we need to understand the root causes of contention. Various scholars have traced this to a general rejection by Adivasis of State-sanctioned neoliberal development projects like land-grabbing and mining. I analyze, based on a fifteen month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict, based on several forms of qualitative data. I argue that at the core of this ongoing conflict lie questions of identity construction and representation, neoliberal market forces, gender, and a historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. Importantly, to best understand Adivasi politics and their relationship to their local environment, one must actively listen to how these communities represent themselves. / Doctor of Philosophy / The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of an ongoing conflict between the Munda Adivasi (indigenous) community and the State. This contentious relationship has existed for several centuries and continues until now. Various scholars describe the conflict as the general rejection of the attempts of State and corporate actors to grab lands in order to carry out neoliberal development projects such as mining and hydroelectricity dams in the region. I analyze, based on a fifteen-month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict. I argue that the current ongoing conflict underlie questions of identity construction and representation embedded in the historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. More specifically, one must understand the subaltern communities, such as the Munda Adivasi, through their discourses.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/111386 |
| Date | 02 February 2021 |
| Creators | Raonka, Pallavi |
| Contributors | Sociology, Wimberley, Dale W., Copeland, Nicholas M., Breslau, Daniel, Cook, Samuel R. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Coverage | Jharkhand, India |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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