Geographies of Difference: Explorations in Northeast Indian Studies

Geographies of Differences comprises sixteen chapters focusing on issues regarding all the states in Northeast India as well as on Northeast Indian Studies (Karlsson, van Schendel). Each paper sheds a specific light on the confinement and the opening-up of the area and of its study in the social sciences (anthropology, history and political science), on the flows and movements, ideas and aspirations, tensions and relations, strategies and struggles that make Northeast India what it is today. The historical imagination of the place is analysed with regard to Fürer-Haimendorf’s research—and its gaps—in the area (Baruah), to the partition of India (van Schendel), to the Zo on the Indo-Burmese border (Son), and to Tripura (Sen). The gaze of the state and its concrete implications are discussed through the study of linguistic policies in the region (Turin), of elections in Meghalaya (Günauer) and in the Bodo areas in Assam—often accompanied by violence—(Deka), of change in artistic production and artists’ living standards under state control (Odyuo), and of exclusion and communalism in connivance with the state in Mizoram (Singh). The papers also highlight various outcomes of the interplay of the politics of resources and local issues of belonging and identity, such as in Assam where ownership of land produces violence, deaths and displacement (Barbora); however, in Arunachal Pradesh, people actively seek participation in hydropower projects (Ete). The encounter of anthropologists with people also contributes to producing the place, as shown in the papers on Assam and Nagaland (Kikon) and on Sikkim (Vandenhelsken). In Sikkim and Meghalaya, Northeast India is far from being disconnected from the world, but young people actively take part in transnational flows of ideas as revealed by their engagement with Korean fashion (Kharsyntiew). Women and their body also experience the tensions between ideas travelling in and through the place, along with the preconceptions and violence they carry (Soibam).