Landlock: Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India

‘Landlock: Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India’ explores material and discursive struggles over the key pieces of information which determine outcomes in long-running controversy over a bauxite mineral project on constitutionally protected tribal lands. Long-running support for Adivasi (or tribal) land rights motivated a wide range of actors to block the project’s implementation across India’s dispersed institutional landscape, while project proponents proved adept in proposing workarounds to prevent its outright cancellation. In the ensuing deadlock, the project was unable to move towards completion, while marginalised Adivasi groups were equally unable to repossess their land. Such a ‘landlock’ is argued to be characteristic of India’s wider inability to deal with conflicts over land matters and highlight the importance to look beyond site implementation and material processes in political ecology research.

The book is published by the Australian National University and is available to download for free here »

Patrik Oskarsson is a Researcher at the Department of Rural and Urban Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His work engages with resource politics in the Global South, particularly in relation to extractive industries including its land use, environmental governance and growing international footprint.

Bengt G. Karlsson is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. His work concerns mainly indigenous peoples' issues and environmental politics in the Global South. Most recent book, with Dolly Kikon, is "Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India" (2019, Cambridge University Press).

This talk is part of the higher seminar series in Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. If you want to get e-mails about our events, please contact: Klara.Fischer@slu.se or Harry.Fischer@slu.se.