1st Edition

Dispossession and Resistance in India The River and the Rage

By Alf Gunvald Nilsen Copyright 2010
252 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

252 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

256 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams, with a particular focus on the Narmada Valley projects in India. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and research, the author draws on Marxist theory to craft a detailed analysis of how local demands for resettlement and rehabilitation were transformed into a radical anti-dam campaign linked to national and... Read more

1. The River and the Rage: Introducing the Narmada Valley Conflict  2. Losing Ground: Accumulation by Dispossession in the Narmada Valley  3. Everyday Tyranny and Rightful Resistance: The Emergence of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath  4. Discovering the Dam: Militant Particularist Struggles for Resettlement and Rehabilitation  5. Towards Opposition: The Formation of the Anti-Dam Campaign  6. Cycles of Struggle: The Trajectory of the Anti-Dam Campaign 1990-2000  7. Enablements and Constraints: The Making of the Maheshwar Anti-Dam Campaign  8. Development, Not Destruction: Alternative Development as a Social Movement Project  9. Whither the Rage? Learning from the Narmada Valley Movement Process

Biography

Alf Gunvald Nilsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests cover social movement theory and research, critical development research, and Marxist approaches to the political economy of capitalist development – all with special reference to India and South Asia.

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"This book is an exemplary analysis of an important social movement against a major dam project in post-colonial India... the book is a theoretically and empirically rich study of one of the most significant movements against neoliberal globalisation, and will surely inform future studies of movements in the developing world." - Manali Desai, London School of Economics, UK Capital & Class, 2011

"Dispossession and Resistance in India is also a salutary and unrivalled exemplar of engaged ethnographic research into the collective capacity of social movements from below to challenge the trajectory of state development strategies shaped by India’s dominant proprietary classes, or social movements from above. Alf Nilson's is an absolute gem of a book that is in a league of its own in revealing the dialectic of social movements from below (in the form of subaltern agents) and social movements from above (in the form of capitalist classes) in shaping the state formation and political economy of the Narmada Valley and India more generally." - Adam Morton, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, www.adamdavidmorton.com