TY - CHAP

T1 - Theorizing Thervoy

T2 - Subaltern Studies and Dalit praxis in India’s land wars

AU - Steur, Luisa Johanna

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - This chapter focuses on three aspects where the praxis of Dalit activists struggling against the state acquisition of their common lands for the purpose of hosting the world's largest tyre factory helps us get a sharper understanding of the political possibility and hegemony involved in India’s land wars. Firstly, I describe how, despite the imagined attractions of the city and the desire to move away from caste discrimination that Chatterjee analyses as part of changing peasant society, Thervoy activists managed to reinterpret Dalit identity as a claim to rural belonging and pride in sustainable agricultural work. Secondly, I look at how, despite the way governmental institutions try to restrict them to Chatterjee’s ‘political society’, Thervoy activists break out of this confinement and manage to articulate a vision of local development to confront the hegemony of neoliberal accumulation by dispossession. And finally, I describe activists’ experience with some of the ‘ethical’ mechanisms that Chatterjee sees as part of the maturation of hegemony, where consent becomes more important than coercion to keep peasant society in line with neoliberal development. In fact, activists’ experience with corporate social responsibility (CSR) made them even less willing to consent to their dispossession.

AB - This chapter focuses on three aspects where the praxis of Dalit activists struggling against the state acquisition of their common lands for the purpose of hosting the world's largest tyre factory helps us get a sharper understanding of the political possibility and hegemony involved in India’s land wars. Firstly, I describe how, despite the imagined attractions of the city and the desire to move away from caste discrimination that Chatterjee analyses as part of changing peasant society, Thervoy activists managed to reinterpret Dalit identity as a claim to rural belonging and pride in sustainable agricultural work. Secondly, I look at how, despite the way governmental institutions try to restrict them to Chatterjee’s ‘political society’, Thervoy activists break out of this confinement and manage to articulate a vision of local development to confront the hegemony of neoliberal accumulation by dispossession. And finally, I describe activists’ experience with some of the ‘ethical’ mechanisms that Chatterjee sees as part of the maturation of hegemony, where consent becomes more important than coercion to keep peasant society in line with neoliberal development. In fact, activists’ experience with corporate social responsibility (CSR) made them even less willing to consent to their dispossession.

UR - http://www.oup.co.in/product/academic-general/sociology/anthropology/114/new-subaltern-politics-reconceptualizing-hegemony-resistance-contemporary-india/9780199457557

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9780199457557

SP - 177

EP - 201

BT - New Subaltern politics

A2 - Nilsen, Alf

A2 - Roy, Srila

PB - Oxford University Press

CY - New Delhi

ER -