State, Law and Adivasi : Shifting Terrains of Exclusion

Book description

This volume presents an overview of the relationship between the state, law, and Adivasis that have experienced a profound political shift due to privatization of natural resources. It discusses the role of the corporates and its impact on livelihoods of the Adivasis in India.

For the Indian state, a significant challenge is to establish a new normative framework for indigenous autonomy based on the values of equality and sustainability. This calls for recognition of the right to self-determination and exercise of collective rights of the Adivasis.

The chapters in this volume examine:

• ‘Exclusion’ as a useful framework for analyzing the various axes of inequality that affect the Adivasi communities

• How state, development, and Adivasi politics play out in entangled ways in the social, political and legal domains

• The interplay of and the deep tension between the promise of legal protection and the realities of inadequate implementation.

About the editors

Antje Linkenbach, an anthropologist and sociologist, is presently a Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany. She has also been conferred adjunct professor by the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She has held teaching and research positions, as well as visiting professorships at institutions in Heidelberg, Tübingen, Bielefeld and Berlin (all Germany), Zürich and Geneva (both Switzerland), and Christchurch (New Zealand). She is a research member of the M. S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Societies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP). Her expertise includes anthropological and sociological theory, anthropology of development and environment, social movements, justice and inequality, human rights, and indigenous rights. She has recently co-edited Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives (2019) and Individualization through Christian Mission? (2015) and is the author of Forest Futures: Global Representations and Ground Realities in the Himalayas (2007). She has published articles in several journals and books.

Vidhu Verma is currently Professor, Centre for Political Studies (CPS), School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. She teaches courses in political philosophy, political theory, and political thought. Her areas of research include comparative political theory, feminist political theory, state and civil society, affirmative action policies, and social justice in India. She has also been chairperson of the CPS, the Gender Sensitization Committee against Sexual Harassment, and the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion at JNU.

She is a research member of ICAS:MP. She is the author of several books, including Non-discrimination and Equality in India: Contesting Boundaries of Social Justice (2012) and has published articles in several journals. She has recently edited The State in India: Ideas, Norms and Politics (2018), Unequal Worlds (2015), and Secularism, Religion and Democracy (2019) and co-edited The Empire of Disgust (2018).