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The Politics of Swidden Farming offers a new explanation for the changes taking place in swidden farming practised in the highlands of eastern India through an ethnographic case study. The book traces the story of agroecological change and state intervention to colonial times, and helps understand contemporary agrarian change by contextualizing farming not just in terms of the science and technology of agriculture or conservation and biodiversity but also in terms of technologies of rule. The Politics of Swidden Farming adds a new dimension to the underdeveloped literature on shifting cultivation in South Asia by focusing on the social ecology of farming and agrarian change in the hills. It provides a comparative viewpoint to state-centred and donor-driven development in the frontier region by bringing in different actors and institutions that become the actants and agents of social change.
The Politics of Swidden Farming is a solid piece of scholarship. It narrates the long history of the Yimchunger Naga through the prism of jhum, or swidden agriculture. While jhum has historically been dismissed and derided by the powerful as an ‘ignorant and savage-like’ and ecologically destructive form of agriculture – derogatorily also labelled ‘slash and burn’ – Das brings to light how among the Yimchunger Naga it is in fact an evolving and dynamic practice shaped by complex historical, social, and political factors. It is impressively well researched and, as such, amply demonstrates the enduring relevance for scholars of agrarian change of combining rigorous historical work with long-term ethnographic fieldwork. — Kenneth Bo Nielsen, University of Oslo
Debojyoti Das is an AHRC-GCRF postdoctoral associate at Bristol University, UK. He received his PhD in social anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has held several prestigious fellowships and consultancies at Yale, Sussex and the University of London. Das has published widely in journals such as the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, Journal of Borderland Studies, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region and Economic and Political Weekly besides contributing to blogs.
List of Illustrations; Foreword; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Methodology and Fieldwork: Negotiating Hazardous Fields; Chapter 3 Ethnography, Violence and Memory: Telling Violence in the Naga Hills; Chapter 4 Jhum and the ‘Science of Empire’: Ecological Discourse, Ethnographic Knowledge and Colonial Mediation; Chapter 5 Land and Land-Based Relations in a Yimchunger Naga Village: From a Book View to a Field View; Chapter 6 The Politics of Time: The Missionary Calendar, the Protestant Ethic and Labour Relations among the Eastern Nagas; Chapter 7 The Micro-Politics of Development Intervention: Village Patrons, Community Participation and the NEPED Project; Chapter 8 Conclusion; Notes, Bibliography; Index.