Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier

This article contributes to the burgeoning critical literature on Naga lifeworlds by using a heterodox Foucaultian and Marxist framework. The analysis is structured as a genealogy that reinterprets the ways that historical epistemologies have shaped contemporary land relations in Nagaland. Our genealogy draws on place-based interviews to foreground what the history of land relations mean to Nagas today. The discussion sheds new light on (i) the epistemological bearings of gennas on the present-day social realities of Naga-Christianity; (ii) territoriality as an epistemology that reified the village-centered ownership of land; (iii) epistemic ruptures of subjectivation under British colonialism. The paper ends by contextualizing the genealogy of Naga land relations to redress its biased representations and culture of alterity by mainstream media and political outlets in India

Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier

This article contributes to the burgeoning critical literature on Naga lifeworlds by using a heterodox Foucaultian and Marxist framework. The analysis is structured as a genealogy that reinterprets the ways that historical epistemologies have shaped contemporary land relations in Nagaland. Our genealogy draws on place-based interviews to foreground what the history of land relations mean to Nagas today. The discussion sheds new light on (i) the epistemological bearings of gennas on the present-day social realities of Naga-Christianity; (ii) territoriality as an epistemology that reified the village-centered ownership of land; (iii) epistemic ruptures of subjectivation under British colonialism. The paper ends by contextualizing the genealogy of Naga land relations to redress its biased representations and culture of alterity by mainstream media and political outlets in India

Reconceptualizing carbon datafication through indigeneity

The growing datafication of the world continues to be a pressing concern for critical geographers. Indigenous scholars are also challenging western research paradigms for under-representing the social effects that datafication imposes on Indigenous communities. This paper adds to these conversations by closely examining the problematic of carbon datafication in Indigenous places using the author's positionality as an Indigenous-Naga geographer. The author simulated carbon maps of Nagaland (northeastern India) to demonstrate the datafication of Indigenous places into carbon commodities, and then used the maps and his emic perspectives to interview Naga tribesmen and tribeswomen about carbon datafication. Selected interviews are highlighted in this paper to contextualize the social effects of carbon datafication on Naga epistemologies of forests, material reorganization of space, and carbon enclosures for global marketization. The paper also examines the limitations of alternative non-digital mapping, as well as the opportunities for locally repurposing GIS applications to involve and benefit Indigenous communities. Elements of local agency and the speculative effects of carbon markets are also discussed in the inter-tribal sociopolitical context of Nagaland

Climate Action and Indigenous Land Relations: A Case Study in Nagaland, Northeastern India

This research grew out of my interest in the implications of climate action, especially its effects in natural-resource-rich peripheral regions like my home state of Nagaland. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the ways in which global ecodevelopment programs expand and mutate at the micro-scales in Indigenous communities. This includes structural transformations to their Indigenous socio-economic and political lifeworlds, their cosmologies, and their affective relations with their ancestral lands and environment. More broadly, the study draws attention to the growing challenges confronting Indigenous peoples in the Global South who are being seduced by neoliberal sustainability agenda, which insist on transforming its devotees into self-serving environmentally friendly entrepreneurs while neutering their economic agency, restricting their access to their land, and blunting the effective exercise of their political power within their communities

Climate Action and Indigenous Land Relations: A Case Study in Nagaland, Northeastern India

This research grew out of my interest in the implications of climate action, especially its effects in natural-resource-rich peripheral regions like my home state of Nagaland. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the ways in which global ecodevelopment programs expand and mutate at the micro-scales in Indigenous communities. This includes structural transformations to their Indigenous socio-economic and political lifeworlds, their cosmologies, and their affective relations with their ancestral lands and environment. More broadly, the study draws attention to the growing challenges confronting Indigenous peoples in the Global South who are being seduced by neoliberal sustainability agenda, which insist on transforming its devotees into self-serving environmentally friendly entrepreneurs while neutering their economic agency, restricting their access to their land, and blunting the effective exercise of their political power within their communities

Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier

This article contributes to the burgeoning critical literature on Naga lifeworlds by using a heterodox Foucaultian and Marxist framework. The analysis is structured as a genealogy that reinterprets the ways that historical epistemologies have shaped contemporary land relations in Nagaland. Our genealogy draws on place-based interviews to foreground what the history of land relations mean to Nagas today. The discussion sheds new light on (i) the epistemological bearings of gennas on the present-day social realities of Naga-Christianity; (ii) territoriality as an epistemology that reified the village-centered ownership of land; (iii) epistemic ruptures of subjectivation under British colonialism. The paper ends by contextualizing the genealogy of Naga land relations to redress its biased representations and culture of alterity by mainstream media and political outlets in India