New Villages for Old
Collective Action and Conditional Futures after India's Forest Rights Act
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2290866 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Vaidya (0000-0003-3350-5462, Reed College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 42-55 |
| Publication date | 2022-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/plar.12466 |
| OpenAlex | W4225270697 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 21 |
In 2011 some two hundred villagers in North India set upon lower-caste neighbors who had hoped to escape landlessness and caste-based exclusion by claiming nearby lands available to them under India's landmark 2006 Forest Rights Act. After their homes were destroyed and their fields razed, the low-caste villagers-who had once hoped for change-traded their new lives for old ones, and contemplated futures of indefinite violence. This article tracks a national attempt to resolve forest landlessness by looking at the events surrounding the Forest Rights Act's implementation in one village, and the array of collective action and connected conditional futures the law inspired there. I argue that such forms of collective action must be understood as operating both in their moment of occurrence and in possible actions to come, and that these possible actions establish threats that continue to shape life beyond the moment of collective action itself. Such an approach brings into view the capacity of collective action to reshape the terms of social life: as the villagers sought land rights, their mobilization both emerged from and transformed relations of caste and gender. A political economy premised on dispossession was similarly both the grounds for struggle and was transformed by new possible futures brought about by collective action
Action (physics · Caste · Collective action · Economics · Futures contract · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure
The Will to Improve
Modern Forests
Marxism and Social Movements
Power in Movement
Friction
Capitalist Divination
Politics of the poor
The local translation of global indigeneity
A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action
Government of Paper
Prophecy and the near future
Blurred Boundaries
Interpreting social movements
The Infinite Rounds of the Stubborn
Cultivating Justice beyond Law
On Cynicism and Citizenship
The Production of Indigenous Land Rights
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |