Overview

This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the historical, cultural, and traditional inferences, inner-logic, and intricacies of democratic politics and elections in Nagaland. It goes beyond 'institutional analyses' of democratic structures and governance by looking at the troubled historical context in which modern democracy was introduced, how Nagas themselves view democracy, the reasoning they adopt as they engage in campaigns and perform elections, the remapping of traditioinal practices and values unto the new democratic playing field, and at the gender and 'clean elections' debates such practices evoke.

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9780692070314

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Reviews

Democracy is commonly understood in the singular - a governing system that a society has more or less of. Democracy in Nagaland encourages us to think about democracy differently, as something that can take different forms, always mediated through local histories, societal complexities, and cultural idioms. Without being the haven of indigenous democracy, the 'traditional' Naga village council seeks consensus decisions through elaborate public deliberations. The main issue, however, as several contributors stress, is that women are debarred from taking part. We are invited to engage such paradoxes and contradictions; for example, how democracy has been appropriated to serve existing power structures, yet also used to question these very structures. This is a powerful book that opens a new conversation about contemporary indigenous politics, one that moves beyond stereotypical depictions that either celebrate or condemn tribal societies. The violent postcolonial experience of the Nagas naturally frames the discussion, pointing to the difficulties of building inclusive democratic participation in a heavily militarized situation. Highlander Books are showing the way for critical scholarship on and in Northeast India. Bengt G. Karlsson Professor, Department of Anthropology, Stockholm University

Author Information

"Jelle J P Wouters is a social anthropologist who has carried out long-term ethnographic and historical research among the upland and tribal Nagas in India's generally lesser known Northeastern Region, writing about insurgency, violence, vernacular politics, capitalism, resource-extraction, and social history. Main research area and focus today are environmental humanities, climate change, water, and human-animal-plant entanglements in Bhutan, and Highland Asia more widely.He teaches at the Royal University of Bhutan in the Department of Social Sciences. He holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and later completed a PhD in Anthropology from the North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong (India). Before joining Royal Thimphu College (Bhutan) as a lecturer he taught for two years at Sikkim Central University, where he was asked to establish the Anthropology Department, and was a visiting fellow (2014-2015) at Eberhard Karls University on a ""Teaching for Excellence"" award granted by the German Research Foundation. He currently also serves as the Chair of the Himalayan Centre for Environmental Humanities, Thimphu. Assistant Professor, Patkai Christian College"

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