ABSTRACT

This book rethinks Northeast India as a lived space, a centre of interconnections and unfolding histories, instead of an isolated periphery. Questioning dominant tropes and assumptions around the Northeast, it examines socio-political and historical processes, border issues, the role of the state, displacement and development, debates over natural resources, violence, notions of body and belonging, movements, tensions and relations, and strategies, struggles and narratives that frame discussions on the region.

Drawing on current and emerging research in Northeast India studies, this work will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, human geography, sociology and social anthropology, history, cultural studies, media studies and South Asian studies.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

Northeastern research entanglements

part I|91 pages

Historical and ethnographic encounters

chapter 3|19 pages

Sutured landscapes

Making of an imperial frontier in Tripura (1848–1854)

chapter 4|17 pages

Portrait of a place

Reflections about fieldwork from the foothills of Northeast India

part II|67 pages

Politics of land and material resources

chapter 6|19 pages

Hydro-dollar dreams

Emergent local politics of large dams and small communities

chapter 8|19 pages

Naga art and their market through time

Delocalisation, state control and globalisation

part III|114 pages

In and out of the state

chapter 10|19 pages

Decades of ‘ethnic massacre’ in Bodoland

The state and the framing of conflict in India’s Northeast

chapter 11|19 pages

Diversity and difference

The art of electioneering in Meghalaya

chapter 12|18 pages

From the shackles of tradition

Motherhood and women’s agitation in Manipur

chapter 13|20 pages

Mizo identity

The role of the Young Mizo Association (YMA) in Mizoram

chapter 14|19 pages

Situating language, recognising multilingualism

Linguistic identities and mother tongue attachment in Northeast India and the region

chapter |17 pages

Afterword

Contested, vertical, fragmenting: de-partitioning ‘Northeast India’ studies