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Indigenous Activism in Bangladesh: Translocal Spaces and Shifting Constellations of Belonging
Abstract
Taking the movement for the rights of indigenous people in Bangladesh as an example, this article elucidates how recent attempts to institutionalise the concept of indigenous people at the global level relate to local claims. These attempts are intrinsically interlinked to identity politics targeting the national political arena, and by adopting the conceptual offerings provided by the UN system as well as those from other parts of the world, activists seek to promote more inclusive approaches. Contemporary translocal indigenous activism, however, is prone to contradictions. On the one hand, identity politics rely upon old-established images of indigenous people with essentialist connotations. On the other hand, it can be observed that the activist configuration, thought in ethnic terms, becomes increasingly porous, for a variety of reasons. After providing an overview of the way indigenous activism in Bangladesh has unfolded recently, the conditions under which the boundaries of belonging to the activist movement are stretched or confined will be discussed. The final part deliberates the findings in relation to the ways in which the social order of the movement may change over time.
... Although the concept of intersectionality is not commonly used in the data, many of the articles take ''intersecting systems'' (Bugg, 2014) as a starting point of research. The studies discuss, for example, intersectional negotiations and collisions between gender, religion, and ethnicity (Bugg, 2014); indigenousness, class, gender, and caste (Gerharz, 2014); homosexuality and religion (Lustenberger, 2014); whiteness and indigenousness (Sonn et al., 2014); and gender and disability (Pestka and Wendt, 2014). The studies emphasizing the intersectional approach in the data indicate how belonging -however individual the experience of it may be -always comprises social and political dimensions. ...
... Thus, while it is necessary to map the multiple meanings of belonging and discuss the basis of its conceptualizations in different research contexts, the strength of belonging as an academic concept lies exactly in its flexibility and adaptability. Due to its fluid nature, belonging helps us explore the shifting character of borders and frontiers (Gerharz, 2014). The complexity of the concept is not accidental but necessary, even to the extent that ''multiple belonging is constitutive of identity'' (Fridlund, 2014: 273;original emphasis). ...
Various epistemological changes – such as the linguistic, narrative, and cultural turns that have influenced humanistic and social scientific studies since the 1980s – have contributed to the increased academic interest in politics, discourses, processes, and practices of belonging. During the recent decades, the idea of belonging or not-belonging have been discussed and theorized in various fields with diverse parallel and/or overlapping conceptualizations. These include, for example, identity, place-making, displacement, and their representational, intersectional, and fluid nature. In recent years, several scholars have aimed to discuss the topics framed by the above mentioned concepts and points of view with a new conceptualization: ‘Belonging’ has been operationalized as a theoretical and analytical tool in the investigation of various contemporary forms of communal interaction. This paper explores ‘belonging’ as a scholarly concept with the method of concept analysis. By analysing a selection of recent academic publications in various fields we seek to answer the following questions: What does ‘belonging’ comprise? How is it used and defined in recent research? How does it relate to other similar concepts employed in the studies of belonging? What kind of added value does the concept bring to these studies? As a result, the paper presents tables and figures indicating the diversity in the notions of belonging and the links and relations between it and other related concepts. The paper concludes by discussing the problems and advantages of the concept of belonging in research.
Find the article: https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/64992
... Although the concept of intersectionality is not commonly used in the data, many of the articles take ''intersecting systems'' (Bugg, 2014) as a starting point of research. The studies discuss, for example, intersectional negotiations and collisions between gender, religion, and ethnicity (Bugg, 2014); indigenousness, class, gender, and caste (Gerharz, 2014); homosexuality and religion (Lustenberger, 2014); whiteness and indigenousness (Sonn et al., 2014); and gender and disability (Pestka and Wendt, 2014). The studies emphasizing the intersectional approach in the data indicate how belonging -however individual the experience of it may be -always comprises social and political dimensions. ...
... Thus, while it is necessary to map the multiple meanings of belonging and discuss the basis of its conceptualizations in different research contexts, the strength of belonging as an academic concept lies exactly in its flexibility and adaptability. Due to its fluid nature, belonging helps us explore the shifting character of borders and frontiers (Gerharz, 2014). The complexity of the concept is not accidental but necessary, even to the extent that ''multiple belonging is constitutive of identity'' (Fridlund, 2014: 273;original emphasis). ...
Studies framing “belonging” as a key focus and a central concept of research have increased significantly in the 2000s. This article explores the dimensions of belonging as a scholarly concept. The investigation is based on a qualitative content analysis of articles published in academic journals covering a large number of different disciplines. The article poses and answers the following research questions: How is belonging understood and used in contemporary research? What added value does the concept bring to scholarly discussions? In the analysis, five topoi of conceptualizing belonging – spatiality, intersectionality, multiplicity, materiality, and non-belonging – were identified. After introducing the topoi, the article explores their cross-cutting dimensions, such as the emphasis on the political, emotional, and affective dimensions of belonging, and discusses key observations made from the data, such as the substantial proportion of research on minorities and “vulnerable” people. The analysis of the data suggests that by choosing to use the concept of belonging, scholars seek to emphasize the fluid, unfixed, and processual nature of diverse social and spatial attachments.
... It has been subjected to many sovereignties, including the Mughal Empire, the British Empire, and Pakistan, before finally becoming a part of independent Bangladesh in 1971. Although the process of colonization started during the period of the East India Company in 1770, because of its distinctive location and demography, the British rulers granted the area special protection in the late 19th century to protect its cultural integrity from outside interference (Gerharz, 2014), giving its inhabitants a certain degree of autonomy until 1860 (Roy, 2004). In 1900 the CHT Manual Act, popularly known as the "1900 Hill Tracts Manual" was adopted for the protection of ethnic minorities' land, culture, and traditional livelihoods (Chakma, 2015), which provided a special identity for CHT Indigenous people and declared it as an excluded area (Roy, 2004). ...
... It has been subjected to many sovereignties, including the Mughal Empire, the British Empire, and Pakistan, before finally becoming a part of independent Bangladesh in 1971. Although the process of colonization started during the period of the East India Company in 1770, because of its distinctive location and demography, the British rulers granted the area special protection in the late 19th century to protect its cultural integrity from outside interference (Gerharz, 2014), giving its inhabitants a certain degree of autonomy until 1860 (Roy, 2004). In 1900 the CHT Manual Act, popularly known as the "1900 Hill Tracts Manual" was adopted for the protection of ethnic minorities' land, culture, and traditional livelihoods (Chakma, 2015), which provided a special identity for CHT Indigenous people and declared it as an excluded area (Roy, 2004). ...
... In Cambodia, the first stronghold for the Democratic Kampuchea (the Khmer Rouge) was the remote northeast, where Pol Pot, Eang Sary and other leaders lived in forest camps populated by mainly ethnic minorities (Baird 2020a). Many other examples could be provided from the region, and similar dynamics can also be found in South Asia, including in northeast India (Chandra 2013), Nepal (Lecomte-Tilouine 2009 and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh (Gerharz 2014). Moreover, leftist militant movements have relied heavily on the support of upland ethnic minorities in various parts of Central and South America (Moro 2007;Hale 2005;de la Cadena 2000). ...
In South East Asia, the relationship between ethnicity and class has been long, complex and at times contradictory. Throughout much of the twentieth century and especially from the 1940s to the 1980s, militant communist revolutionary movements sought to include upland ethnic minorities, citing vicitimization as racialized minorities, poor economic conditions, remote abodes and perceived egalitarian worldviews as the main reasons for targeting them. Mountain-dwelling minorities often made strong guerilla soldiers, and were attracted to the equality across races and ethnicities promised to them by communist cadres. By the late twentieth century, this had broken down, with new ethnicity-based and globalized concepts of indigeneity beginning to circulate, take hold and hybridize. While Indigenous peoples' movements often have important class-based roots, with both Indigenous and leftist movements having similar emancipatory aspirations, Indigenous movements organize primarily based on ethnicity rather than class. Here, I consider the complex relationships between class and ethnicity/ indigeneity as they play out in relation to Free and Prior Informed Consent associated with REDD+ and communal land titling in Laos. Shifts towards increasingly classifying people based on indigeneity are reorienting society, including nature-society relations, but there are also efforts underway to reclassify based on class.
... They were referred to as tribal or Upojati (a meaning similar to 'uncivilized') signifying their perceived lower status. Although Indigenous groups of Bangladesh seek constitutional recognition as Indigenous (in Bangla Adivasi), they are recognised as "tribal groups" in the health policy of Bangladesh [14][15][16][17][18]. ...
Background
Increased maternal health care (MHC) service utilisation in Bangladesh over the past decades has contributed to improvements in maternal health outcomes nationally, yet there is little understanding of Indigenous women’s experiences of accessing MHC services in Bangladesh.
Methods
Face-to-face semi-structured qualitative interviews with 21 Indigenous women (aged 15–49 years) within 36 months of delivery from three ethnic groups (Chakma, Marma and Tripura) were conducted between September 2017 and February 2018 in Khagrachhari district. Purposive sampling was used to recruit women representative of the population distribution in terms of age, ethnic community and service use experience. All interviews were conducted in Bangla language and audio-recorded with consent. Interviews were transcribed directly into English before being coded. Data were analysed thematically using a qualitative descriptive approach aided by NVivo12 software.
Results
Of the 21 women interviewed, 14 had accessed at least one MHC service during their last pregnancy or childbirth and were categorised as the User group. The remaining seven participants were categorised as ‘Non-users’ as they had not access antenatal care, facility delivery or postnatal care services. Women reported that they wanted culturally relevant, respectful, home-based and affordable care, and generally perceived formal MHC services as being only for complications and emergencies. Barriers to accessing MHC services included low levels of understanding about the importance of MHC services, concerns about service costs, limited transport and fears of intrusive practices. Experiences within health services that deterred women from accessing future MHC services included demands for unofficial payments and abusive treatment by public facility staff.
Conclusion
Improving access to MHC services for the CHT Indigenous women requires improved understandings of cultural values, priorities and concerns. Multifaceted reform is needed at individual, community and health systems levels to offer culturally appropriate health education and flexible service delivery options.
... Th is form of categorization is also omnipresent in the language construction of Bengalis when dealing with Pahari adivasi in the CHT. Th e Bangladeshi central state has supported this politics of language through the generation of terminological disputes, resulting from a constitutional amendment regarding the identity of Pahari adivasi people, which used terms such as upajatee (subnation), khudra nrigosti (small ethnic group), and "tribal" (see Gerharz 2014aGerharz , 2015Uddin 2014). Within such an unequal structure of relations, language plays a signifi cant role in shaping the stratifi ed relationship between the Pahari adivasi and Bengalis. ...
Reconsidering the trend in anthropology to conceptualize the multifaceted nature of the state and to focus on the local social dynamics beneath the institutional framework of the state, we argue that “state” is not a single governing entity but rather a multilayered body of practices at various levels of the society. We configure “state” as constructed, imagined, and negotiated by people in their everyday life in four dimensions: zones of limited statehood depicted as “peripheries,” “local state” by which the center governs locales, “public discourse” that represents dominant notions of “stateness,” and ambivalent positioning of political elites who represents state in the margin. This argument is substantiated with the reference to the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a southeastern part of Bangladesh.
... A social and political process towards constitutional recognition of Bangladeshi ethnic minorities as indigenous peoples did get gradual recognition, but was rejected by an amendment in 2011. This period reflects the limited scope for transnational activism and reveals that the potential for success is highly dependent on context (Gerharz, 2014a). The contemporary indigenous movement in Bangladesh shows that the minorities are building multi-ethnic, strategically oriented alliances which are open to evolve situatively and which at the same time are contributing to the maintaining of the ethnical demarcation (Gerharz, 2014b). ...
The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into account their complex histories as mobile landless peasants. Our ethnographic research reveals that the framing of the local minorities and the mobile Bengalis as two antagonistic categories with opposing interests obscures the fact that both categories have fallen victim to very similar regimes of mobilities and immobilities of the state and national and local (political, economic and military) elites. Here, we reject binary thinking that counterpoises mobility and immobility as two antagonistic concepts and argue that mobility and immobility are intrinsically related and their relationship is asymmetrical.
The 1997 Peace Accord in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) promised to bring an end to decades of violence in the region. However, 25 years later, the region is still experiencing social conflict between indigenous Pahari people and Bengalis, who have migrated and settled in large numbers since the 1970s. This paper examines the reasons for the continuation of social conflict through a survey on community attitudes and relations. The survey findings show that the legacy of migration and conflict in the CHT is still evident in starkly different views on resources, conflict, and community relations. These findings support the argument that the migration of people with different ethnic backgrounds into regions inhabited by ethnic minorities causes competition for resources that may generate conflict and violence with long-lasting consequences.
This open access book discusses how cultural literacy can be taught and learned through creative practices. It approaches cultural literacy as a dialogic social process based on learning and gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. The book focuses on meaning-making in children and young people’s visual and multimodal artefacts created by students aged 5–15 as an outcome of the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme implemented in schools in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. The lessons in the program address different social and cultural themes, ranging from one’s cultural attachments to being part of a community and engaging more broadly in society. The artefacts are explored through data-driven content analysis and self-reflexive and collaborative interpretation and discussed through multimodality and a sociocultural approach to children’s visual expression. This interdisciplinary volume draws on cultural studies, communication studies, art education, and educational sciences.
Tuuli Lähdesmäki is an associate professor at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Jūratė Baranova was a professor at the Department of Continental Philosophy and Religious Studies, Vilnius University, Lithuania.Susanne C. Ylönen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Katja Mäkinen is a senior researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Vaiva Juškiene is a junior researcher at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania.
Irena Zaleskienė is a senior researcher at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania.
The topics of the present research are, in a larger sense, two multilingual and multicultural regions: the Tornio Valley in Northern Scandinavia and Transylvania in Eastern Europe. In a narrower sense, I am analysing two novels written in minority languages, a Transylvanian Hungarian novel written by Károly Molter, entitled Tibold Márton and a novel written in Meänkieli by Bengt Pohjanen, Jopparikuninkhaan poika (The Smuggler King’s Son). I attempt to answer two main research questions: 1. How is the belonging of the two main characters to a different language and ethnic group presented in the analysed Hungarian and Meänkieli novels? 2. How can the borders between “us” and “them” be constructed through inclusion and exclusion and how can they be crossed at the individual level? I will thus concentrate on some aspects of the narratives of inclusion and exclusion, as represented in the above-mentioned novels.
In this chapter, the authors discuss artifacts in which children explore belonging and home. The chapter defines the sense of belonging as a core feature of humanity and living together. The feeling of having a home and being at home is both an intimate and a socially shared aspect of belonging. The children expressed belonging to a wide range of spaces in their artifacts. This spatial span extends from macro to micro scale and indicates belonging based on spaces, social relations, and materiality. Even very young children can see and depict their belonging as multiple and including spatial and social dimensions. The analyzed artifacts reveal both concrete and symbolic approaches to belonging and home.
Understanding one's sense of belonging is a central part of identity formation and self-awareness; feeling safe somewhere, with specific people is identified as a basic human need. This paper explores the ideas of children from three age groups in five different European as they discussed the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. Findings showed that the children's ideas could be organised into six interrelated aspects: Spatiality, Materiality, Multiplicity, Social Relations, Affect, and Dislocation. Whilst there were differences in the ways that the children conceptualised home across the classes, even the youngest children were able to describe their ideas using metaphors and abstract concepts, and they agreed that a home was more than just a building.
This chapter analyses the multiple meanings and uses of the concept of belonging, its contradictions and affordances. It highlights the foundational work of Yuval-Davis in setting out definitions of the concept which have informed youth studies through a focus on the everyday; the relationship between identity and belonging, and ontologies of belonging. It discusses ontologies of belonging, which shift the focus from the everyday to forms of belonging that are anchored in a people’s collective, historical relationship with ancestors and the land through a spiritual connection, the binaries of subject/object, human/non-human. These discussions reveal the uses (and challenges) of the concept of belonging as a tool for analysing the complex, often messy worlds of young people.
The internal migration of Bengali people to the CHT since the 1970s has been a significant factor in the long-standing ethnopolitical conflict in this region. The prevailing view is that while poverty and environmental disasters were push factors in this migration, government settlement programmes were primarily responsible for this population shift. This article offers a fresh perspective on this historic migration by exploring its environmental causes. It shows through an analysis of a questionnaire survey and interviews with Bengali settlers in the CHT that climatic events such as floods, cyclones, and riverbank erosion contributed to the migration decisions of the majority of the respondents. Government protection and provision of land and social networks in the CHT were mediating factors that enabled Bengali migrants to settle permanently in the CHT. This insight challenges the conventional narrative that the settlement was primarily politically motivated and confirms that complex migration motivations cannot be reduced to single drivers.
Indigeneity, a concept and construct, is increasingly gaining currency in academia, in the political sphere, and in public debates. Indigeneity as an active political force with international support has become a resource in identity politics. This article focuses on the dynamics of how the transnational idea of indigeneity has been nationally installed and locally translated within the context of the ethnohistory of an Indigenous movement that stemmed from local–societal relations with the state. The idea of indigeneity is seen as both local and global because it is globally circulated but locally articulated as well as globally charged but locally framed. Focusing on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in the borderlands of South and Southeast Asia and home to 11 Indigenous groups in Bangladesh, the article argues that the local translation of global indigeneity is necessary for ensuring the rights and entitlements of Indigenous Peoples.
This article analyses how belonging becomes articulated in relation to large-scale extractive projects. It does so through an ethnographic analysis of the construction of belonging expressed in languages of valuation (the meanings that people give to natural resources discursively and in practice) in the Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands. Belonging is understood to encompass ‘feeling at home in a place' and the political processes through which belonging becomes a discursive resource (the politics of belonging). We conclude that the ways people position themselves toward shale gas extraction are both rooted in how they give meaning to and interact with their environment and embedded in local history and ideas of political agency and voice. Only those elements of belonging that are considered objective or useful as policy solution are used as a discursive resource in mobilisation against shale gas. The article is based on 2,5 years of ethnographic fieldwork. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
In recent decades, indigenous people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in South-east Bangladesh have experienced increased social and spatial mobility. This article investigates how indigenous students from the CHT region who have migrated to Dhaka redefine indigenous belonging. By highlighting the juxtaposition of different forms of mobility (physical and social) the paper responds to a recent trend which has only rarely been the subject of scholarly enquiry. In particular, it examines the experiences of mobility of individual students and explores the ways in which these students justify their quest for higher education to fulfil their aspirations for a better future. The paper also reveals the obstacles students experience in their everyday lives, mainly in the form of stereotypical, often racist talk. It discusses the structural disadvantages indigenous students face as members of ethnic minorities as well as the strategies employed by the students to counter them. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how indigenous students negotiate urban lifestyles and redefine modernity and indigeneity simultaneously and how migrants face exclusion based on static interpretations of people from the CHT as put forward in mainstream discourses as well as by transnational indigenous activist networks. These lead to feelings of alienation between indigenous students and their Bengali Bangladeshi peers, leaving students to increasingly draw on indigenous networks to achieve mobility.
All around the world, people are exposed to information and imageries that may have been generated in far-away places, but by implication become part of their everyday lives. These cultural imaginaries, whether ‘realistic’ or not, are widespread and have real-life consequences. They do not only produce new self-images, aspirations and ideals, but also transform notions of (aspired) belonging and mobility. In this article, we show how mobility (transnational connectivity, spatial, social and economic mobility) plays an important role in the everyday life and future aspirations of young members of the indigenous community of Garos in Bangladesh. In the contemporary globalizing context of Bangladesh, young Garos have constructed aspirations which can no longer be fulfilled in their native villages. With this case study of social and cultural meanings of mobility for indigenous youth, we also wish to contribute to a better understanding of past and present processes of social transformation amongst indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. While previous studies of indigenous minorities in South Asia are characterized by a focus on stillness and stasis rather than change and mobility, this article calls for a differing approach in ethnographic research on ethnic minorities, one which recognizes the mobile and (globally) connected context and challenges dominant notions of ‘tribal’ or ‘indigenous’ communities as frozen in time and space.
Do the current changes of both geographical and symbolic boundaries lead to the emergence of a world society? How do transnational migration, communication and worldwide economic and political networks manifest themselves in globalised modernity? This book presents innovative contributions to transnationalisation research and world society theory based on empirical studies from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Practicable methodologies complete theoretical inquiries and provide examples of applied research, which also might be used in teaching.
This article analyses the formation of an ethnic category and its relations with the marginalisation of ethnic minorities in the context of upland-lowland relations in Bangladesh. Three central concerns are highlighted. First, it examines the political and historical trajectories of the South Asian subcontinent which has laid down various identities for groups of people such as the Pahari living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Second, it critically discusses how colonial policy has continued in the postcolonial era, particularly in dealing with people of different cultures living in the same state's territory. Finally, the article argues that identity formation is closely linked with the politics of marginality, with particular reference to the Pahari people of the CHT. The article is based on comprehensive data collected through ethnographic fieldwork undertaken at different times from 1997 onwards.
On Human Rights Day 1992, the United Nations proclaimed an International Year of the Worlds Indigenous People. A Decade for Indigenous Peoples was subsequently launched, to run from 1995 to 2004, and a Forum of Indigenous Peoples established. The inaugural meeting of the Forum, held in Geneva in 1996, was unfortunately disrupted by gatecrashers. A selfstyled delegation of South African Boers turned up and demanded to be allowed to participate on the grounds that they too were indigenous people. Moreover, they claimed that their traditional culture was under threat from the new African National Congress government. They were unceremoniously ejected, and no doubt their motives were far from pure, but the drama might usefully have drawn attention to the difficulty of defining and identifying indigenous people.
This article examines the present mobilization of indigenous peoples in India and their assertions of indigeneity at the United Nations. The notion of ‘indigenous peoples’ is highly controversial in India, and both the government and leading social scientists/anthropologists claim that it is neither possible nor desirable to single out any such category of peoples in the country. Above all, the fear is that the indigenous rights’ agenda will lead to further divisions of the society and fuel violent ethnic separatism. This, however, does not prevent marginalized ‘tribal peoples’ from asserting themselves as indigenous and claiming rights on the basis of this identity. Particularly during the last ten years an increasing number of indigenous delegates from India have participated in the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Indigenous Populations’ annual sessions in Geneva. At the UN these delegates express solidarity and a common plight with the world’s indigenous peoples. What is this all about and how should we as anthropologists relate to the emerging globalized field of indigenous politics? These are questions I address in the article. As a minimal requirement, I claim that anthropologists need to move beyond the sterile debate about whether the concept of indigenous peoples is relevant and take note of the fact that the concept is already out there.
This article argues that the concept of `identity' is of limited heuristic value and proposes that it may instead be more useful to deploy the notion of narratives of location and positionality for addressing the range of issues normally thought to be about collective identity. Location and positionality (and translocational positionality) are more useful concepts for investigating processes and outcomes of collective identification — that is, the claims and attributions that individuals make about their position in the social order of things, their views of where and to what they belong (and to what they do not belong) as well as an understanding of the broader social relations that constitute and are constituted in this process. This enables a complete abandonment of the residual elements of essentialization retained even within the idea of fragmented and multiple identities so favoured by critics of unitary notions of identity. The article will draw on research into the ways in which experiences of `race' and ethnicity were articulated in the narrations produced by British-born youngsters of Greek Cypriot background.
This paper deals with socio-cultural innovation in the hills of southeastern Bangladesh. Outsiders have always been struck by the ethnic diversity of this area. The literature—written mainly by British civil servants, Bengali men of letters, and European anthropologists—presents a picture of twelve distinct ‘tribes’, all practising swidden or shifting agriculture, locally known as jhum cultivation. In addition, there are Bengali immigrants who do not engage in swidden cultivation.
This article reports on the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the 13th of September 2007 by the United Nations General Assembly. The article examines the final stages of the negotiation of the Declaration and briefly considers the role that anthropology might play in promoting this new human rights instrument.
The established rhetoric of opposition between state and NGOs as development agents has shifted to one of complementarity and common interest. Along with this, the ‘comparative advantage’ claimed for NGOs has expanded from economic and welfare benefits to encompass also the political goods of civil society and popular participation. This paper reviews these developments in the context of Bangladesh. It argues that they need to be assessed critically in ways which are both theoretically informed and locally contextualized. While recognizing that there are, indeed, areas of common experience and interest between the state and NGOs in Bangladesh, it questions whether these necessarily coincide with the interests of those they all invoke: the poor.
How do transnational ideas such as human rights approaches to violence against women become meaningful in local social settings? How do they move across the gap between a cosmopolitan awareness of human rights and local sociocultural understandings of gender and family? Intermediaries such as community leaders, nongovernmental organization participants, and social movement activists play a critical role in translating ideas from the global arena down and from local arenas up. These are people who understand both the worlds of transnational human rights and local cultural practices and who can look both ways. They are powerful in that they serve as knowledge brokers between culturally distinct social worlds, but they are also vulnerable to manipulation and subversion by states and communities. In this article, I theorize the process of translation and argue that anthropological analysis of translators helps to explain how human rights ideas and interventions circulate around the world and transform social life.
In Ethnicity, Inc. anthropologists John L. and Jean Comaroff analyze a new moment in the history of human identity: its rampant commodification. Through a wide-ranging exploration of the changing relationship between culture and the market, they address a pressing question: Wherein lies the future of ethnicity? Their account begins in South Africa, with the incorporation of an ethno-business in venture capital by a group of traditional African chiefs. But their horizons are global: Native American casinos; Scotlandâs efforts to brand itself; a Zulu ethno-theme park named Shakaland; a world religion declared to be intellectual property; a chiefdom made into a global business by means of its platinum holdings; San âBushmenâ with patent rights potentially worth millions of dollars; nations acting as commercial enterprises; and the rapid growth of marketing firms that target specific ethnic populations are just some of the diverse examples that fall under the Comaroffsâ incisive scrutiny. These phenomena range from the disturbing through the intriguing to the absurd. Through them, the Comaroffs trace the contradictory effects of neoliberalism as it transforms identities and social being across the globe. Ethnicity, Inc. is a penetrating account of the ways in which ethnic populations are remaking themselves in the image of the corporationâwhile corporations coopt ethnic practices to open up new markets and regimes of consumption. Intellectually rigorous but leavened with wit, this is a powerful, highly original portrayal of a new world being born in a tectonic collision of culture, capitalism, and identity.
In the UN, indigenous peoples have achieved more rights than any other group of people. This book traces this to the ability of indigenous peoples to create consensus among themselves; the establishment of an indigenous caucus; and the construction of a global indigenousness.
The English novelist E. M. Forster once wrote that "if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country" (1972, 66). Forster's claim seems particularly provocative, given that it was written in 1939, on the eve of World War II, a time when accusations of treason could have deadly implications. Yet for Forster personal bonds of love and friendship were to take priority over the demands of state and nation. At a personal level, Forster's claim should almost certainly be read in terms of the criminalization of homosexuality in early twentieth-century Britain. It cannot be surprising if loyalty to lovers and confidantes overrides allegiance to a discriminatory legal regime. However, at the same time, Forster also recognized that the demands of one's country can be hard to resist. It is not clear if the courage he asks for is bravery in the face of the coercive power of the state or moral fortitude to make an ultimately difficult ethical decision. The tension among intimate personal relationships, the demands of states, and the hard moral choices that these produce are at the heart of this book. Traitors are rarely, if ever, simply venal or self-interested, and accusations of treachery are seldom self-evident. Rather, treason is a product of often contradictory social and political obligations. As Forster reminds us, we are never simply citizens or friends but always and necessarily both at the same time. As we try to negotiate our multiple allegiances, we must balance competing demands on our loyalty. In this context, any act of treachery can also be a potential act of loyalty to another cause. The guilt or innocence of traitors is, therefore, never clear-cut, as competing moral values make often-conflicting demands. Treachery is reproduced in the "gray zones" of political life, destabilizing the rigid moral binaries of victim and persecutor, friend and enemy. Despite or even because of the ethical ambiguity of treason, accusations of treachery often attract the most vehement, sometimes violent, condemnation. Treason was the last crime to attract the death penalty in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere is subject to the most brutal forms of punishment. The violence of accusations of treason can perhaps be explained by the fact that acts of treason seem to threaten and destabilize the fragile moral and social relationships that hold us together and bind us to the perhaps otherwise abstract notions of nation, people, or community. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, traitors arguably attract a particular aversion because they are not a distant "other" but the enemy within. They are a source of internal transgression, and as such, they call into question the moral and political commitments of those who seem to be closest to us. McCarthyism, Stalinist purges, and even medieval witch crazes did not focus on distant strangers but tried to root out internal subversion. In this context, accusations of treason try to define who is inside and who is out, laying claim to moral and political certainty in the face of uncertainty. Treason has often been treated as a pathology or a distortion of political life. Its importance has, therefore, been sidelined in social and political analysis. However, one of the central propositions of this volume is that, far from being pathological, the identification and prosecution of treason are constant, essential, and "normal" parts of the processes by which attempts are made to reproduce social and political order. Placing treason at the heart of our attempts to understand the ways in which political regimes are made and unmade helps us raise important questions about categories of belonging, about their moral, political, and economic foundations, and about the often contradictory choices faced by modern political subjects. The bond between the state and its citizens is never complete, as it is mediated by a host of contradictory affiliations to kin and social groups and can be overruled by wider ethical obligations. The specter of treason is thus embedded within notions of the loyal citizen. Citizenship is itself fraught with risk. The fidelity of even those who appear to have the greatest allegiance can never be assured. Betrayal is always a possibility.1 It is not just the stranger that is feared and suspected but also the seemingly faithful citizen. Therefore, political conflict should not be understood as just the marking of difference or the delineation of boundaries but as the product of a tension inherent in the state-citizen relationship. Both states and their citizen/ subjects are prone to the moral and social unease produced by fundamentally incomplete forms of loyalty and legitimacy. Antagonism is produced not only between the citizen and the one who appears to be different but among those who seem to be the same, those who, at first glance, seem to share the most intense sense of solidarity. Intimacy is not the antithesis of fear but can be at its core. In asking how traitors, both as an abstract category and as concrete persons, are reproduced in the context of local histories, contributors to this volume address larger theoretical questions about the nature of shifts in (postcolonial) citizenship. They explore how the historically specific dimensions of the relationship between citizens/subjects and those who speak in the name of the state create particular configurations of trust, suspicion, and belonging. As such, three key themes run through the volume. The first is the relationship between treason and the fragile nature of state-building processes. All modern states are built on betrayal, and continuing acts of treasons are central to their development. In a context where states depend on the multiple and often contradictory intimate relationships of kinship, ethnicity, and class to extend their reach, claims of treason help map the moral boundaries of the state and the people in whose name they speak. The second theme is the forms of suspicion and fear that are inherent in social and political relationships. We suggest that the possibility of betrayal is the everpresent dark side of intimacy, taking on new and ever more frightening forms in the context of state-building. The third and final theme is the ethical nature of treason. Acts of treason are produced through the contradictory loyalties and fears produced by rapid social change, creating particular configurations of accountability and responsibility. Copyright
From labor organizers to immigrant activists, from environmentalists to human rights campaigners, from global justice protesters to Islamic militants, this book shows how ordinary people gain new perspectives, experiment with new forms of action, and sometimes emerge with new identities through their contacts across borders. It asks to what extent transnational activism changes domestic actors, their forms of claim making, and their prevailing strategies. Does it simply project the conflicts and alignments familiar from domestic politics onto a broader stage, or does it create a new political arena in which domestic and international contentions fuse? And if the latter, how will this development affect internationalization and the traditional division between domestic and international politics?
The tribal insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh is an interesting example of a struggle for self-determination. This article analyses the theoretical and empirical aspects of this struggle for autonomy. The authors suggest that the situation can be usefully analysed as an example of internal colonization, or the settlement of previously unoccupied territories within the boundaries of the state. Post-1947 governments adopted a policy of encouraging the migration of nontribals to the sparsely populated tracts. These nontribals - that is Bengalis - are a minority in the Tracts but they reap most of the benefits accruing from development projects. This deprivation of the tribals, along with the inundation of vast areas of tribal land by the Karnafuli hydroelectric project and inadequate governmental aid for the victims, led the tribal people to perceive the Bengali-run government as having planned their total destruction and caused them to take up arms against it. -from Authors
The indigenous quest for self-determination is an attempt to give voice to local injustice in a universal language, and to make claims to difference via a right that applies equally to all peoples. This article explores recent developments in the transnational indigenous movement's struggle for the right of self-determination by pointing out that this polyvalence-like the indeterminacies of the concepts of "peoples" and "indigenous"-is a productive one that enables indigenous activists to make a unique intervention in international law. Their work aims at creating a new international legal personality based on collective rather than individual rights, and on an understanding of "peoples" as self-determining entities not necessarily aspiring to statehood. This new understanding hinges, in turn, on an emerging perception of the capacity to culture as a general human right. This article addresses recent anthropological texts critical of the transnational indigenous movement to show that the "self" in self-determination as articulated by indigenous activists is not only not accounted for and not protected under current international legal regimes, but is also "a self" through which radical claims to culture and territory are being made.
Yuval-Davis outlines an analytical framework for the study of belonging and the politics of belonging. Her article is divided into three interconnected parts. The first explores the notion of ‘belonging' and the different analytical levels on which it needs to be studied: social locations; identifications and emotional attachments; and ethical and political values. The second part focuses on the politics of belonging and how it relates to the participatory politics of citizenship as well as to that of entitlement and status. The third part illustrates, using British examples, some of the ways particular political projects of belonging select specific levels of belonging in order to construct their projects.
Obra que reconstruye el origen y evolución de las actuales redes transnacionales que, con la utilización de las nuevas tecnologías informativas como recurso organizador y aglutinador, han logrado constituirse en movimientos más o menos presionadores en la defensa de los derechos humanos, de la protección ambiental y de una mayor equidad de género, entre otros.
This article offers a new taxonomy of how actors may change ethnic boundaries. I distinguish between five main strategies: to redraw a boundary by either expanding or limiting the domain of people included in one's own ethnic category; to modify existing boundaries by challenging the hierarchical ordering of ethnic categories, or by changing one's own position within a boundary system, or by emphasizing other, non-ethnic forms of belonging. The taxonomy claims to be exhaustive and accommodates a considerable number of historical and contemporary cases both from the developed and the developing world. It aims at overcoming the fragmentation of the literature along disciplinary and sub-disciplinary lines and prepares the ground for an agency-based comparative model of ethnic boundary making.
Since the 1990s, the upsurge of multiple “sons-of-the-soil” conflicts all over the world has reopened academic debate about the rise of nativism, the role of ethnicity, and the alleged crisis of citizenship within the postcolonial state. Often the renewed claim for belonging versus exclusion under the vernacular of “autochthony” is seen as a reactionary attempt to counter the de-rooting of identity within the neoliberal globalizing context. This article makes the case that at the base of many homeland disputes lie too powerfully territorialized (ethnic) identities and the enduring but highly selective reaffirmation of such “natural” geo-cultural links —by both local political agents and state. In the Indian state of Assam, the struggle over indigenous homelands has not been a cry for closure within the engulfing globalizing world, but the result of sustained, yet ambivalent politics of identification, classification, and ethnographic mapping through which the colony and post-colony have sought to reshape the political landscape of India's Northeast. This selective but highly mobilizing politics of autochthony has not only extolled fierce struggle between “indigenous” and “fake autochthon” communities over the protection and demarcation of indigenous homeland, it has also engendered fierce conflict amongst autochthon groups about the degree of indigeneity required to claim a separate homeland of their own.
Since the 1990s, the upsurge of multiple “sons-of-the-soil” conflicts all over the world has reopened academic debate about the rise of nativism, the role of ethnicity, and the alleged crisis of citizenship within the postcolonial state. Often the renewed claim for belonging versus exclusion under the vernacular of “autochthony” is seen as a reactionary attempt to counter the de-rooting of identity within the neoliberal globalizing context. This article makes the case that at the base of many homeland disputes lie too powerfully territorialized (ethnic) identities and the enduring but highly selective reaffirmation of such “natural” geo-cultural links —by both local political agents and state. In the Indian state of Assam, the struggle over indigenous homelands has not been a cry for closure within the engulfing globalizing world, but the result of sustained, yet ambivalent politics of identification, classification, and ethnographic mapping through which the colony and post-colony have sought to reshape the political landscape of India's Northeast. This selective but highly mobilizing politics of autochthony has not only extolled fierce struggle between “indigenous” and “fake autochthon” communities over the protection and demarcation of indigenous homeland, it has also engendered fierce conflict amongst autochthon groups about the degree of indigeneity required to claim a separate homeland of their own.
This article examines how, in rhetoric and practice, the post‐colonial politics of Bangladesh have come together in intricate and problematic ways that render the Adivasi invisible in society, and how this state‐sponsored narrative has become the regulatory mechanism for keeping the Adivasi at the margin of the state. It analyses the problematics of being an Adivasi in a nation‐state that reifies itself as Bengali and Muslim with reference to the Chakmas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and, in particular, to the disappearance of the Adivasi human rights activist Kalpana Chakma.
This paper offers a critical analysis of ‘groupism’ and suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing ethnicity without invoking the imagery of bounded groups. Alternative conceptual strategies focus on practical categories, cultural idioms, cognitive schemas, discursive frames, organizational routines, institutional forms, political projects, and contingent events. The conceptual critique has implications for the ways in which researchers, journalists, policymakers and NGOs address ‘ethnic conflict’ and ‘ethnic violence’. The paper concludes with an analysis of an empirical case from Eastern Europe.
It was the official line of Suharto's regime that Indonesia is a nation which has no indigenous people, or that all Indonesians are equally indigenous. 1 The internationally recognized category “indigenous and tribal peoples” (as defined in International Labour Organization convention 169) has no direct equivalent in Indonesia's legal system, nor are there reservations or officially recognized tribal territories. Under Suharto the national motto “unity in diversity” and the displays of Jakarta's theme park, Taman Mini, presented the acceptable limits of Indonesia's cultural difference, while development efforts were directed at improving the lot of “vulnerable population groups,” including those deemed remote or especially backwards. The desire for development was expressed by rural citizens through the approved channels of bottom-up planning processes and supplications to visiting officials. National activists and international donors who argued for the rights of indigenous people were dismissed as romantics imposing their primitivist fantasies upon poor folk who wanted, or should have wanted, to progress like “ordinary” Indonesians. Nevertheless, a discourse on indigenous people took hold in activist circles in the final years of Suharto's rule, and its currency in the Indonesian countryside is still increasing. With the new political possibilities opened up in the post-Suharto era, now seems an appropriate time to reflect on how Indonesia's indigenous or tribal slot is being envisioned, who might occupy it, and with what effects. 2
In the last two decades transnational concerns over indigenous people, indigenous rights and indigenous development has reignited a history of heated debate shrouding indigeneity. This article analyses these debates in the context of the anthropology and historiography of indigeneity in India. From the production of ‘tribes of mind’ to the policies that have encouraged people to identify themselves as ‘Scheduled Tribes’, or ‘adivasis’, the article reviews the context that gave rise to the tensions between claims for protection and assimilation of India's indigenous peoples. Today these debates are shown to persist through the arguments of those that seek to build a support base from an adivasi constituency and are most acute with on the one hand, the work of the Marxists and indigenous activists, and on the other hand, the Hindu right-wing. Inviting serious scholarly examination of the unintended effects of well meaning indigenous protection and development measures, the article seeks to move the debate beyond both the arguments that consider the concept of indigenous people anthropologically and historically problematic and those that consider indigeneity a useful political tool. In so doing, the article warns against a ‘dark side of indigeneity’ which might reveal how local appropriation and experiences of global discourses can maintain a class system that further marginalises the poorest.
A critical examination of the transnational discourse of indigeneity in the context of adivasi or indigenous peoples' political struggles in India contrasts two Indian indigenous political movements: the “transnational” imaginary of the Indian Council for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which is the central organization representing India's indigenous peoples at the United Nations, and the “local” imaginary of the Koel-Karo movement, one of several adivasi movements against displacement that mark the Indian political landscape today. Given that these transnational and very local imaginaries both work in relation to different domains of governmentality, I question why a transnational governmentality involving indigenous peoples produces a static and essentialized discourse of indigeneity that inadvertently undermines local initiatives like Koel-Karo. Rural adivasi populations redeploy elements of colonial and nation-state governmentality forged in relation to them in ways that demonstrate a remarkable flexibility in the imagination of indigeneity. As the neoliberal regime in India has, with a terrifying intensity, contributed to the displacement of adivasis, the question of indigeneity as adivasi identity has to address these different histories of governmentality, the modalities of the politics they have precipitated, and other ways of articulating “local” adivasi movements with transnational alliances. This examination of indigeneity in India concludes by problematizing some of the ways in which contemporary academic discourse has interpreted “governmentality” in relation to subaltern movements.
In this article, I deal with the complexities of “indigeneity” and “autochthony,” two distinct yet closely interrelated concepts used by various actors in local, national, and international arenas in Africa and elsewhere. With the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2007, hopes were high among activists and organizations that the precarious situation of many minority groups might be gradually improved. However, sharing the concerns of other scholars, I argue that discourses of indigeneity and autochthony are highly politicized, are subject to local and national particularities, and produce ambivalent, sometimes paradoxical, outcomes. My elaborations are based on in-depth knowledge of the case of the Mbororo in Cameroon, a pastoralist group and national minority recognized by the United Nations as an “indigenous people” although locally perceived as “strangers” and “migrants.” For comparative purposes, and drawing on related studies, I integrate the Bagyeli and Baka (also known as Pygmies) of southern and southeastern Cameroon into my analysis, as they share the designation of indigenous people with the Mbororo and face similar predicaments. [indigeneity, autochthony, identity, United Nations, Cameroon]
Relatively little is known or understood about Bangladesh by outsiders. Since its hard-won independence from Pakistan in 1971, it has been ravaged by economic and environmental disasters. Only recently has the country begun to emerge as a fragile, but functioning, parliamentary democracy, relatively self-sufficient in food production and with an economy that has been consistently achieving growth. The story of Bangladesh, told through the pages of this concise and readable book, is a truly remarkable one. By delving into its past, and through an analysis of the economic, political and social changes that have taken place over the last twenty years, the book explains how Bangladesh is becoming of increasing interest to the international community as a portal into some of the key issues of our age: the way globalization affects the world's poorer countries, the long-term effects of the international development industry, the potential risks to people and environment from climate change and the political challenges facing modern Muslim-majority nations. In this way the book offers an important corrective to the view of Bangladesh as a failed state and also sheds light on the lives of a new generation of its citizens.
This paper argues that ethnocide in post-colonial states can be located in the interplay of three processes: (1) nation-building and development visions of the bureaucratic state; (2) the struggle for autonomy by the minorities; and (3) militarised pursuit of national security agenda by the bureaucratic state. The bureaucratic, political, economic, cultural and military penetration of the state into the territories of the indigenous communities often results in the marginalisation of those communities and destruction of their cultures and identity. It leads to demand for autonomy by the minorities. The state reacts to the struggle for autonomy by pursuing a militarised security agenda. Ethnocide in the post-colonial state occurs against the vortex of these processes. The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh is an interesting case of ethnocide in the above context.
This chapter examines the complex interactions between religion and culture in constructing definitions of national identity in Bangladesh and in shaping the political projects of recent regimes. It also attempts to throw light on certain features which differentiate current Islamisation processes in Bangladesh from those in Pakistan and Iran described elsewhere in this volume. In all three countries, official Islamisation programmes were begun in the latter half of the 1970s. In both Iran and Pakistan, however, these programmes went further than in Bangladesh and, despite clear differences in the political forces behind them, had important features in common. Of particular significance was the central place accorded by both to the position of women. Islamic norms of behaviour were enforced more strictly for women through a variety of religious laws as well as the state’s pronouncements on female apparel and conduct in the public sphere.
neva, Switzerland, has since its beginnings escaped anthropological attention to a large degree.' Yet it is a site where notions of indigenous culture have been articulated systematically and with striking consistency for nearly two decades. It is the only global institution at which indigenous identity has for years been discussed. It is also a place to which indigenous delegates have traveled in numbers that have increased dramatically over the last eighteen years. The WGIP has offered them the possibility to comment on local, regional, national, and international developments pertaining to the situations of indigenous peoples, and to participate actively in the development of international legal standards for the protection of their rights. No other global forum has ever enabled such a large and diverse group of activists and their organizations to fully articulate their problems on a regular, that is, yearly, basis, and to voice their opinion on how these problems should be solved. Indeed, the WGIP is a "unique exercise in international affairs" (Burger 1994:90) and "an exceptional U.N. forum in this regard" (Lam 1992:617). The arguments brought forth by indigenous representatives are breathtaking in their breadth and complexity, while the host of actors and institutions involved directly or indirectly is virtually innumerable. As a site of particular discursive density where indigenous identities and cultures are generated and articulated during intense encounters between indigenous and nonindigenous individuals, groups, institutions, organizations, and state-representatives, the WGIP is a vital nodal point in the global "indigeno-scape" (Beckett 1996). If the transnational indigenous social movement is to be understood "from above and below" (Brysk
Activists Beyond Borders; Tarrow, New Transnational Activism; and della Porta and Tarrow
- Keck
- Sikkink
Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Tarrow, New Transnational Activism; and della Porta and Tarrow, Transnational Protest.
Pushed to the Margins " ; Chakma Post-Colonial State " ; and Uddin Politics of Cultural Difference
- Karim
Karim, " Pushed to the Margins " ; Chakma, " Post-Colonial State " ; and Uddin, " Politics of Cultural Difference. "
The Indigenous Space
- Dahl
Dahl, The Indigenous Space.
Where Do I Belong? " ; Yuval Davis Belonging " ; and Pfaff-Czarnecka Minorities-in-Minorities
- Anthias
Anthias, " Where Do I Belong? " ; Yuval Davis, " Belonging " ; and Pfaff-Czarnecka, " Minorities-in-Minorities. "
Articulating Indigenous " ; Ghosh Global Flows " ; and Pfaff-Czarnecka, " Challenging Goliath
- Li
Li, " Articulating Indigenous " ; Ghosh, " Global Flows " ; and Pfaff-Czarnecka, " Challenging Goliath. "
Transnationalisation " ; and Gerharz Approaching Indigenous Activism
- Lachenmann
Lachenmann, " Transnationalisation " ; and Gerharz, " Approaching Indigenous Activism. "
The Return of the Native " and van Schendel Dangers of Belonging
- Kuper
Kuper, " The Return of the Native " and van Schendel, " Dangers of Belonging. "
Dark Side of Indigeneity " ; Vanderkerckhove Sons of This Soil
- Shah
Shah, " Dark Side of Indigeneity " ; Vanderkerckhove, " Sons of This Soil. " 17. Bates, " Lost Innocents. "
The Politics of Nationalism
- Mohsin
Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism; Jahangir, Problematics of Nationalism.
Alienation of the Lands
- Adnan
- Dastidar
Adnan and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands.
Complexities of Indigeneity, " 55; Muehlebach Making Place. " 29. Oldham and Frank We the Peoples. " 30. The Chakma Raja is one of the three traditional chiefs residing over the administrative system in the CHT
- Pelican
Pelican, " Complexities of Indigeneity, " 55; Muehlebach, " Making Place. " 29. Oldham and Frank, " We the Peoples. " 30. The Chakma Raja is one of the three traditional chiefs residing over the administrative system in the CHT.