The contributions to this volume explore movements against capital and the state in contemporary rural India. The contributors analyze the politics of subaltern agency, translocal activism, and academic knowledge-production in different, albeit interlinked, locations. The volume puts forth the argument that these are modes of political action that share complex relationships with each other, and may complement each other at times and yet contradict or even cancel out another at other times.

• Introduction: Nature, Culture, and Knowledge in the Study of Social Movements in Rural India - Uday Chandra and Daniel Taghioff


• Section I: Transcending Nature/Culture


• 1: Democratic Struggles in the Bhil Heartland: Historical Trajectories and Contemporary Scenarios - Alf Gunvald Nilsen


• 2: Into the Grid: Hydropower and Subaltern Politics in Northeast India - Bengt G. Karlsson


• 3: Everyday Forest Rights: Property, Community and the State in Kalahandi District- Matthew B. Shutzer


• Space for Social Action in the Politics of Nature: Commentary by K. Sivaramakrishnan


• Section II: Structures and Subjectivities


• 4: Manju Devi's Martyrdom: Marxist-Leninist Politics and the Rural Poor in Bihar - Nicolas Jaoul


• 5: Managing 'Communities' of Resistance: Negotiating Caste and Class in an Anti-land Acquisition Movement in West Bengal - Kenneth Bo Nielsen


• 5: The Emergence of Adivasi Political Subjectivity in Late Socialist Kerala - Luisa Steur


• Structures and subjectivities: Commentary by Subir Sinha


• Section III: Power, Knowledge, Action


• 6: Negotiating Knowledge and Power in Indigenous Movements and Development Plans - Felix Padel


• 7: Being Indigenous in Adivasi India; Or How to Decolonize the Postcolonial Imagination - Madhuri Karak


• 8: 'Word Traps' and the Drafting of India's Forest Rights Act - Anand Vaidya


• 9: Drawing on Experiences from the Forests: The Limits and Possibilities of Resource Struggles in India Today - Shankar Gopalakrishnan


• Reflections of a (western) Anthropological Elder: Commentary by Judith Whitehead


• Index


• Notes on Editors and Contributors

Uday Chandra is Assistant Professor of Government, School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Georgetown University.
Daniel Taghioff is an independent anthropologist based in Delhi.