Dolly Kikon
Biographic Data
| ID | 454747 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dolly Kikon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dolly |
| FAMILY NAME | Kikon |
| SIGNATURE | KIKON D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0875-6008 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Foodways: An Introduction
The movement of foods as commodities and cultural artefacts rests on infrastructure as a form of engagement, care, and as an ongoing process. In this issue of Roadsides, we think through such cosmologies alongside the infrastructure that moves food around the world, and ask: how do foodways and their socio-cultural-cosmological scaffoldings condition each other
Guerrilla farms: Practicing food sovereignty in Assam
With the aim to free Assam from the 'colonial occupation of India' and reclaim its sovereignty, the guerrillas of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had led a self-determination movement in Assam since 1979. Their struggle is grounded upon the extractive nature of the Indian Government to turn Assam into what scholars have called to be a 'colonial hinterland' for oil, tea, coal, and forest products. This article is about the farming initi…
Decentering Food Pedagogies
In this collaborative essay, five gastrofeminists from various disciplines, mainly literature, anthropology, sociology, ethnic studies, and diverse locations of Global South and Global North, share four collaborative experiments built around two axioms: to integrate experiences of students as gendered and racialized subjects in their experiential learning irrespective of disciplinary boundaries, and to integrate critical feminist scholarship that…
About Flying, Life, and Hope to Get You All Back from Oxford University
Indigenous pedagogies of love: Theorizing nonscalable worlds
We returned home empty-handed: Covid-19, care, and contested citizenship of Naga migrant workers in northeast India
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
Dirty food: Racism and casteism in India
This article traces how food cultures in India reiterate social hierarches and caste logics of cleanliness and purity. Religious, intellectual and aesthetics battles about food preferences underline how the upper caste sensibilities justify and regulate everyday consumption and dietary practices. An integral part of Brahminical power is based on regulating and upholding dietary taboos grounded on caste ideology. Drawing from my ethnographic resea…
The rehabilitation zone: Living with lemons and elephants in Assam
Lemon farming promoted as rehabilitation programs in western Assam has generated income for villages that were deeply affected by ethnic conflict in the 1990s. Rehabilitation is tied to an economic logic linked with the market and a profit-driven measure of development. In the absence of an official reconciliation process on the ground, these economic initiatives have become an ambitious and attractive model for the Indian state to rebuild societ…
Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood: Fermenting Flavors and Identities in Northeast India
This essay draws from my ethnographic fieldwork in Northeast India and examines how identities are mediated through fermented food like bamboo shoot. These shoots come in different textures and forms: wet chunky pieces, sun-dried and stringy threads, smoked and curly strands. Our relationship with fermented food, as this essay highlights, determine how we organize, move, and order our lives, contributing to the creation of differences and allianc…
Light Skin and Soft Skills: Training Indigenous Migrants for the Hospitality Sector in India
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
English-Language Documents and Old Trucks: Creating Infrastructure in Nagaland's Coal Mining Villages
In Nagaland, state attempts to control coal mining are framed as efforts to stop practices labelled ‘unscientific’ by the government. In this article we explore the ways in which communities create their own mining infrastructure built on networks of relations—materialised in English-language documents—and everyday technology—demonstrated in the prevalence of old trucks and improvised machinery. These objects enable livelihoods and supplementary …
Wayfinding: Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
Jackfruit seeds from Jharkhand: Being adivasi in Assam
This article examines how adivasis in Assam assert their sense of belonging to the land. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the foothills bordering Assam and Nagaland, I present the everyday lives of adivasi villagers in a militarised landscape and examine how adivasi belonging and identity are constructed in a political milieu where ideas of indigeneity and territoriality are deeply internalised. I look into how adivasi accounts hig…
Fermenting Modernity: Putting Akhuni on the Nation's Table in India
In this article, I explore notions of modernity, citizenship, belonging and transgressions in South Asia through the fermented food, akhuni. Fermented soya beans, popularly known as akhuni in Nagaland, a state in Northeast India with a majority tribal population, has a distinct pungent aroma and taste. This food is relished across the eastern Himalayan societies, including Nagaland, but routinely causes conflict between akhuni consumers and those…
The predicament of justice: Fifty years of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India
Militarisation and structural violence under the Armed Forces Specials Powers Act (AFSPA) is tied to a strong moral framework to proselytise recalcitrant citizens. Deploying Jacque Derrida's point that law is not justice, this paper highlights how the pursuit of justice within the framework of law is a challenging task. Interrogating the contentions around what constitutes ‘justice’ under the AFSPA, this paper exposes how states legitimise lawles…
Destroying differences, schooling consent: A critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1
(2003). Destroying differences, schooling consent: a critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 232-248
The predicament of justice: Fifty years of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India
Militarisation and structural violence under the Armed Forces Specials Powers Act (AFSPA) is tied to a strong moral framework to proselytise recalcitrant citizens. Deploying Jacque Derrida's point that law is not justice, this paper highlights how the pursuit of justice within the framework of law is a challenging task. Interrogating the contentions around what constitutes ‘justice’ under the AFSPA, this paper exposes how states legitimise lawles…
Light Skin and Soft Skills: Training Indigenous Migrants for the Hospitality Sector in India
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
Jackfruit seeds from Jharkhand: Being adivasi in Assam
This article examines how adivasis in Assam assert their sense of belonging to the land. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the foothills bordering Assam and Nagaland, I present the everyday lives of adivasi villagers in a militarised landscape and examine how adivasi belonging and identity are constructed in a political milieu where ideas of indigeneity and territoriality are deeply internalised. I look into how adivasi accounts hig…
Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood: Fermenting Flavors and Identities in Northeast India
This essay draws from my ethnographic fieldwork in Northeast India and examines how identities are mediated through fermented food like bamboo shoot. These shoots come in different textures and forms: wet chunky pieces, sun-dried and stringy threads, smoked and curly strands. Our relationship with fermented food, as this essay highlights, determine how we organize, move, and order our lives, contributing to the creation of differences and allianc…
Fermenting Modernity: Putting Akhuni on the Nation's Table in India
In this article, I explore notions of modernity, citizenship, belonging and transgressions in South Asia through the fermented food, akhuni. Fermented soya beans, popularly known as akhuni in Nagaland, a state in Northeast India with a majority tribal population, has a distinct pungent aroma and taste. This food is relished across the eastern Himalayan societies, including Nagaland, but routinely causes conflict between akhuni consumers and those…
Wayfinding: Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
The rehabilitation zone: Living with lemons and elephants in Assam
Lemon farming promoted as rehabilitation programs in western Assam has generated income for villages that were deeply affected by ethnic conflict in the 1990s. Rehabilitation is tied to an economic logic linked with the market and a profit-driven measure of development. In the absence of an official reconciliation process on the ground, these economic initiatives have become an ambitious and attractive model for the Indian state to rebuild societ…
Guerrilla farms: Practicing food sovereignty in Assam
With the aim to free Assam from the 'colonial occupation of India' and reclaim its sovereignty, the guerrillas of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had led a self-determination movement in Assam since 1979. Their struggle is grounded upon the extractive nature of the Indian Government to turn Assam into what scholars have called to be a 'colonial hinterland' for oil, tea, coal, and forest products. This article is about the farming initi…
Indigenous pedagogies of love: Theorizing nonscalable worlds
We returned home empty-handed: Covid-19, care, and contested citizenship of Naga migrant workers in northeast India
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
English-Language Documents and Old Trucks: Creating Infrastructure in Nagaland's Coal Mining Villages
In Nagaland, state attempts to control coal mining are framed as efforts to stop practices labelled ‘unscientific’ by the government. In this article we explore the ways in which communities create their own mining infrastructure built on networks of relations—materialised in English-language documents—and everyday technology—demonstrated in the prevalence of old trucks and improvised machinery. These objects enable livelihoods and supplementary …
Destroying differences, schooling consent: A critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1
(2003). Destroying differences, schooling consent: a critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 232-248
Destroying differences, schooling consent: A critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1
(2003). Destroying differences, schooling consent: a critical analysis of education policy in Indian-administered Nagaland 1. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 232-248
The predicament of justice: Fifty years of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India
Militarisation and structural violence under the Armed Forces Specials Powers Act (AFSPA) is tied to a strong moral framework to proselytise recalcitrant citizens. Deploying Jacque Derrida's point that law is not justice, this paper highlights how the pursuit of justice within the framework of law is a challenging task. Interrogating the contentions around what constitutes ‘justice’ under the AFSPA, this paper exposes how states legitimise lawles…
Fermenting Modernity: Putting Akhuni on the Nation's Table in India
In this article, I explore notions of modernity, citizenship, belonging and transgressions in South Asia through the fermented food, akhuni. Fermented soya beans, popularly known as akhuni in Nagaland, a state in Northeast India with a majority tribal population, has a distinct pungent aroma and taste. This food is relished across the eastern Himalayan societies, including Nagaland, but routinely causes conflict between akhuni consumers and those…
English-Language Documents and Old Trucks: Creating Infrastructure in Nagaland's Coal Mining Villages
In Nagaland, state attempts to control coal mining are framed as efforts to stop practices labelled ‘unscientific’ by the government. In this article we explore the ways in which communities create their own mining infrastructure built on networks of relations—materialised in English-language documents—and everyday technology—demonstrated in the prevalence of old trucks and improvised machinery. These objects enable livelihoods and supplementary …
Wayfinding: Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
Jackfruit seeds from Jharkhand: Being adivasi in Assam
This article examines how adivasis in Assam assert their sense of belonging to the land. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the foothills bordering Assam and Nagaland, I present the everyday lives of adivasi villagers in a militarised landscape and examine how adivasi belonging and identity are constructed in a political milieu where ideas of indigeneity and territoriality are deeply internalised. I look into how adivasi accounts hig…
Light Skin and Soft Skills: Training Indigenous Migrants for the Hospitality Sector in India
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
The rehabilitation zone: Living with lemons and elephants in Assam
Lemon farming promoted as rehabilitation programs in western Assam has generated income for villages that were deeply affected by ethnic conflict in the 1990s. Rehabilitation is tied to an economic logic linked with the market and a profit-driven measure of development. In the absence of an official reconciliation process on the ground, these economic initiatives have become an ambitious and attractive model for the Indian state to rebuild societ…
Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood: Fermenting Flavors and Identities in Northeast India
This essay draws from my ethnographic fieldwork in Northeast India and examines how identities are mediated through fermented food like bamboo shoot. These shoots come in different textures and forms: wet chunky pieces, sun-dried and stringy threads, smoked and curly strands. Our relationship with fermented food, as this essay highlights, determine how we organize, move, and order our lives, contributing to the creation of differences and allianc…
Dirty food: Racism and casteism in India
This article traces how food cultures in India reiterate social hierarches and caste logics of cleanliness and purity. Religious, intellectual and aesthetics battles about food preferences underline how the upper caste sensibilities justify and regulate everyday consumption and dietary practices. An integral part of Brahminical power is based on regulating and upholding dietary taboos grounded on caste ideology. Drawing from my ethnographic resea…
Decentering Food Pedagogies
In this collaborative essay, five gastrofeminists from various disciplines, mainly literature, anthropology, sociology, ethnic studies, and diverse locations of Global South and Global North, share four collaborative experiments built around two axioms: to integrate experiences of students as gendered and racialized subjects in their experiential learning irrespective of disciplinary boundaries, and to integrate critical feminist scholarship that…
About Flying, Life, and Hope to Get You All Back from Oxford University
Indigenous pedagogies of love: Theorizing nonscalable worlds
We returned home empty-handed: Covid-19, care, and contested citizenship of Naga migrant workers in northeast India
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
Foodways: An Introduction
The movement of foods as commodities and cultural artefacts rests on infrastructure as a form of engagement, care, and as an ongoing process. In this issue of Roadsides, we think through such cosmologies alongside the infrastructure that moves food around the world, and ask: how do foodways and their socio-cultural-cosmological scaffoldings condition each other
Guerrilla farms: Practicing food sovereignty in Assam
With the aim to free Assam from the 'colonial occupation of India' and reclaim its sovereignty, the guerrillas of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had led a self-determination movement in Assam since 1979. Their struggle is grounded upon the extractive nature of the Indian Government to turn Assam into what scholars have called to be a 'colonial hinterland' for oil, tea, coal, and forest products. This article is about the farming initi…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · South Asian Studies and Diaspora (5 works)