Mini-India
The Politics of Migration and Subalternity in the Andaman Islands
Price: 1195.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780199469864
Publication date:
08/05/2017
Hardback
384 pages
Price: 1195.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780199469864
Publication date:
08/05/2017
Hardback
384 pages
Philipp Zehmisch
This ethnographic study of the Andaman settler society analyses various shades of inequality that arise from migrant communities' material and representational access to the state. The author employs the concept of subalternity to investigate political negotiations of island history, collective identity, ecological sustainability, and resource access. Interpreting characteristic views, practices, and voices of subaltern interlocutors, the author untangles their collective agency and consciousness in migration, settlement, and place-making processes. Further, the book highlights particular subaltern strategies in order to achieve autonomy and peaceful cohabitation through movement, cultural and social appropriation, and multi-layered methods of resistance.
Rights: World Rights
Philipp Zehmisch
Description
Often called ‘Mini-India’, the Andaman Islands have been a crucial site of encounter between different regimes, subjects, castes, creeds, languages, and ethnicities. Since 1858, subaltern convicts, refugees, repatriates, and labourers from South and Southeast Asia have moved to the islands, condemned to, or in search of a new life. While some migrants have achieved social mobility, others have remained disenfranchised and marginalized.
This ethnographic study of the Andaman settler society analyses various shades of inequality that arise from migrant communities’ material and representational access to the state. The author employs the concept of subalternity to investigate political negotiations of island history, collective identity, ecological sustainability, and resource access. Interpreting characteristic views, practices, and voices of subaltern interlocutors, the author untangles their collective agency and consciousness in migration, settlement, and place-making processes. Further, the book highlights particular subaltern strategies in order to achieve autonomy and peaceful cohabitation through movement, cultural and social appropriation, and multi-layered methods of resistance.
About the Author
Philipp Zehmisch is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
Philipp Zehmisch
Table of contents
List of Figures and Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Prologue
Introduction
Part I Theory, Methodology, and the Field
1 The Concept of Subalternity: Theoretical and Methodological Implications
2 Doing Fieldwork in the Andamans: Transformations with and within the Field
Part II Islands of Subalternity: Migration, Place-Making, and Politics
3 Subaltern Migrations and the State
4 Mini-India: Nationalism, Politics, and Subaltern Consciousness
5 Manifestations of History
Interlude: Fieldwork, the Subaltern, and the Everyday State
Part III Landscapes of Subalternity: An Ethnography of the Ranchis of Mini-India
6 Uncovering the Silent Other: Colonization, Aboriginal Labour, and the Production of Ranchi-ness
7 The Ranchis of Mini-India: Subaltern Lifeworlds in the Margins of the State
8 The Politics of Voice and Silence: Dialectics of Domination and Autonomy
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Philipp Zehmisch
Features
- First ethnographic literature on the Ranchi community in the Andaman Islands
- Contributes to the academic tradition of subaltern theory from an anthropological perspective
- Focusses on how marginalized people from criminalized, low-class, low-caste, landless, refugee, repatriated, and Adivasi backgrounds have come to form a cosmopolitan ‘Mini-India’ in the Andaman Islands.
Philipp Zehmisch
Review
‘This anthropological work is an innovative and insightful use of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory to examine the social formation of the little-studied Andaman Islands. We get a fascinating examination of the combined and contradictory working of inter-ethnic relations, colonialism, nationalism, and racialized labour that underlies the framing of the Andamans as Mini-India. At once theoretically informed and ethnographically rich, the book illuminates how state policies and the practices of migrant groups—and their silences—produce and negotiate the conditions of domination and subalternity.’
—Gyan Prakash
Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University, USA
‘An important and insightful work that sheds much-needed light on the afterlife of a penal colony, and on the emergence of novel formulations of society and identity in modern India.’
—Satadru Sen
Professor of History, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, USA
Description
Often called ‘Mini-India’, the Andaman Islands have been a crucial site of encounter between different regimes, subjects, castes, creeds, languages, and ethnicities. Since 1858, subaltern convicts, refugees, repatriates, and labourers from South and Southeast Asia have moved to the islands, condemned to, or in search of a new life. While some migrants have achieved social mobility, others have remained disenfranchised and marginalized.
This ethnographic study of the Andaman settler society analyses various shades of inequality that arise from migrant communities’ material and representational access to the state. The author employs the concept of subalternity to investigate political negotiations of island history, collective identity, ecological sustainability, and resource access. Interpreting characteristic views, practices, and voices of subaltern interlocutors, the author untangles their collective agency and consciousness in migration, settlement, and place-making processes. Further, the book highlights particular subaltern strategies in order to achieve autonomy and peaceful cohabitation through movement, cultural and social appropriation, and multi-layered methods of resistance.
About the Author
Philipp Zehmisch is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
Reviews
‘This anthropological work is an innovative and insightful use of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory to examine the social formation of the little-studied Andaman Islands. We get a fascinating examination of the combined and contradictory working of inter-ethnic relations, colonialism, nationalism, and racialized labour that underlies the framing of the Andamans as Mini-India. At once theoretically informed and ethnographically rich, the book illuminates how state policies and the practices of migrant groups—and their silences—produce and negotiate the conditions of domination and subalternity.’
—Gyan Prakash
Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University, USA
‘An important and insightful work that sheds much-needed light on the afterlife of a penal colony, and on the emergence of novel formulations of society and identity in modern India.’
—Satadru Sen
Professor of History, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, USA
Table of contents
List of Figures and Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Prologue
Introduction
Part I Theory, Methodology, and the Field
1 The Concept of Subalternity: Theoretical and Methodological Implications
2 Doing Fieldwork in the Andamans: Transformations with and within the Field
Part II Islands of Subalternity: Migration, Place-Making, and Politics
3 Subaltern Migrations and the State
4 Mini-India: Nationalism, Politics, and Subaltern Consciousness
5 Manifestations of History
Interlude: Fieldwork, the Subaltern, and the Everyday State
Part III Landscapes of Subalternity: An Ethnography of the Ranchis of Mini-India
6 Uncovering the Silent Other: Colonization, Aboriginal Labour, and the Production of Ranchi-ness
7 The Ranchis of Mini-India: Subaltern Lifeworlds in the Margins of the State
8 The Politics of Voice and Silence: Dialectics of Domination and Autonomy
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
