Vernacular Politics in Northeast India
Democracy, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:23rd Aug '22
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Perhaps nowhere in India is contemporary politics and visions of 'the political' as diverse, animated, uncontainable, and poorly understood as in Northeast India. Vernacular Politics in Northeast India offers penetrating accounts into what guides and animates Northeast India's spirited political sphere, including the categories and values through which its peoples conceive of their 'political' lives. Fourteen essays by anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers think their way afresh into the region's political life and sense. Collectively they show how different communities, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy to themselves, how ethnicity has become a politically pregnant expression of local identities, and how forms and politics of indigeneity assume a life of its own as it is taken on, articulated, reworked, and fought over by peoples.
Jelle Wouters has come of age, both in terms of theoretical insights and writing skills, and with Vernacular Politics he seems fully poised to dominate the scene. This book not only brings together some of the theoretically most topical, portent, and inebriating concepts like counter-sovereignties, ethno-politics, bio-moral politics, prophecy as politics, cosmo-politics, alter-politics, and compressed modernity, but also some of the most promising young and a few but highly accomplished senior scholars. * Tanka B. Subba, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong *
Vernacular Politics challenges the illusion of transparency of the practices and aspirations of contemporary politics. The essays draw out the multiple and complex local meanings attached to voting, running for office, or offering armed resistance and provide fresh perspectives on politics in Northeast India. * Sanjib Baruah, Bard College, New York. *
Vernacular Politics in Northeast India: Democracy, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity interlinks different indigenous and localized accounts of political difference and power. * Shivangi Kaushik, The Journal of Development Studies *
ISBN: 9780192863461
Dimensions: 223mm x 146mm x 28mm
Weight: 648g
426 pages