Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt – författare

Everyday Justice in India's Coal Transition reimagines the concept of justice by exploring what a 'just transition' away from coal could look like in the Indian context. It defines 'everyday justice' more broadly to include informal economies and labour and the realities of human lives that have been fundamentally altered by coal mining. In doing so, it acknowledges the rights of local communities to make choices about their own future, have attachments to their own place and other local people, and finally, participate in political decisions and hold property. It builds a compelling case for everyday justice in India's coal transition through three kinds of evidence: testimonies collected from the same individuals over more than two decades, beginning in the late 1990s, to present a temporal view of their altered livelihoods and worldviews; a detailed examination of coal production and transport by various agents and unconventional labour arrangements therein; and the degradation of the landscape and decay of peasantry in older coal mining regions situated near the Jharkhand region in eastern India. Through decades of research, observation, interaction, and conversation with people, Lahiri-Dutt and Oskarsson provide vital insights for those aiming to understand grassroots perspectives and the need for multiple approaches to justice.

An intimate glimpse into the microcosmic world of “hybrid landscapes” and their inhabitantsWith this book Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta offer an intimate glimpse into the microcosmic world of “hybrid environments.” Focusing on chars—the part-land, part-water, low-lying sandy masses that exist within the riverbeds in the floodplains of lower Bengal—the authors show how, both as real-life examples and as metaphors, chars straddle the conventional categories of land and water, and how people who live on them fluctuate between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The result, a study of human habitation in the nebulous space between land and water, charts a new way of thinking about land, people, and people's ways of life.

Until the 1970s gender had been invisible in analyses of social space and place in the androcentric discipline of geography. While recent contributions to feminist geography have challenged this, in India the engagement of geographers with gender, by being conservative in its choice of focus and orthodox in methodology, has been unable to destabilise the established disciplinary order. However, with younger scholars becoming increasingly interested in studying gender in geography, novel and innovative methods that include combinations of quantitative and qualitative analyses, visual sources and in-depth case studies are being tried out and accepted in geography despite its masculine legacy.This pioneering study brings together Indian geographers’ contributions to understanding gender, and through them, seeks to enrich the discipline of geography. It engages with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences, which has reclaimed the explanatory power of space and place in social theory that had been nearly lost to deconstructive postmodernist scholarship. The volume draws entirely from the Indian scholarship, showcasing contextualised knowledge production, but hopes to initiate a a dialogue with scholars elsewhere working with feminist methodologies.

Contrary to their masculine portrayal, mines have always employed women in valuable and productive roles. Yet, pit life continues to be represented as a masculine world of work, legitimizing men as the only mineworkers and large, mechanized, and capitalized operations as the only form of mining. Bringing together a range of case studies of women miners from past and present in Asia, the Pacific region, Latin America and Africa, this book makes visible the roles and contributions of women as miners. It also highlights the importance of engendering small and informal mining in the developing world as compared to the early European and American mines. The book shows that women are engaged in various kinds of mining and illustrates how gender and inequality are constructed and sustained in the mines, and also how ethnic identities intersect with those gendered identities.

Contrary to their masculine portrayal, mines have always employed women in valuable and productive roles. Yet, pit life continues to be represented as a masculine world of work, legitimizing men as the only mineworkers and large, mechanized, and capitalized operations as the only form of mining. Bringing together a range of case studies of women miners from past and present in Asia, the Pacific region, Latin America and Africa, this book makes visible the roles and contributions of women as miners. It also highlights the importance of engendering small and informal mining in the developing world as compared to the early European and American mines. The book shows that women are engaged in various kinds of mining and illustrates how gender and inequality are constructed and sustained in the mines, and also how ethnic identities intersect with those gendered identities.

Social science research is emerging on a range of issues around large and small-scale mining, connecting them to broader social, cultural, political, historical and economic factors rather than purely measuring the environmental impacts of mining. Within this broader context of global scholarly attention on extractive industries, this book explores two specific contexts: the cultural politics of coal and coal mining, within the context of one particular country, India, which is the third largest coal producer in the world. Both contexts are special; with its separate Ministry, coal occupies pride of place in contemporary India, shaping the energy future and influencing the economic and political milieu of the country. The supremacy attributed to coal mining in contemporary India represents how ’coal nationalism’ has replaced ’coal colonialism’ in the country, turning this commodity into an icon, a national symbol. In recent years the extraction of coal in forest-covered resource peripheries has dispossessed and pauperised many tribal and rural communities who have used these resource-rich lands for their livelihoods for generations. The combustion of coal to produce electricity constitutes the compelling need, and the factor that prevents the Indian state from fully engaging with the impending realities of a climate-changed future. All these reasons make the timing of this book of crucial importance. In particular, The Coal Nation explores the complex history of coal in India; from its colonial legacies to contemporary cultural and social impacts of mining; land ownership and moral resource rights; protective legislation for coal as well as for the indigenous and local communities; the question of legality, illegitimacy and illicit mining and of social justice. Presenting cutting-edge multidisciplinary social science research on coal and mining in India, The Coal Nation initiates a productive dialogue amongst academics and between them and activists.

This book responds to the need to explore the multitude of interconnected factors causing displacements that compel people to move within their homelands or traverse various borders in the contemporary world that is characterised by extensive and rapid movements of people. It addresses this need by bringing together historical and contemporary accounts and critical examinations of the displaced, by articulating the commonalities in their lived experiences. It accomplishes the task of charting a new path in displacement studies by offering a number of studies from interdisciplinary and diverse methodological approaches comprising ethnographic and qualitative research and literary interpretations to emphasise that although the forms and conditions of mobility are highly divergent, individual experiences of displacement and placelessness offer a critical challenge to the artificial categorisations of people's movements. Each chapter adds insights into the different configurations of displacement and placement, and offers fresh interpretations of migration and dislocation in today's rapidly changing world. The contributors critically examine a variety of displacement processes and experiences in the context of war, tourism, neoliberal policies of development, and the impact of various agro-forestry policies. They focus on a range of countries, enabling a thorough comparative analysis in terms of scope and range of examples and methods of analysis. This book makes an original contribution to the growing body of literature on displacement, and will appeal to a wide readership including advanced undergraduates, and graduate students and professors in disciplines such as human geography, development studies, sociology and anthropology, regional studies and comparative impact assessment.

Until the 1970s gender had been invisible in analyses of social space and place in the androcentric discipline of geography. While recent contributions to feminist geography have challenged this, in India the engagement of geographers with gender, by being conservative in its choice of focus and orthodox in methodology, has been unable to destabilise the established disciplinary order. However, with younger scholars becoming increasingly interested in studying gender in geography, novel and innovative methods that include combinations of quantitative and qualitative analyses, visual sources and in-depth case studies are being tried out and accepted in geography despite its masculine legacy.This pioneering study brings together Indian geographers’ contributions to understanding gender, and through them, seeks to enrich the discipline of geography. It engages with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences, which has reclaimed the explanatory power of space and place in social theory that had been nearly lost to deconstructive postmodernist scholarship. The volume draws entirely from the Indian scholarship, showcasing contextualised knowledge production, but hopes to initiate a a dialogue with scholars elsewhere working with feminist methodologies.

This book responds to the need to explore the multitude of interconnected factors causing displacements that compel people to move within their homelands or traverse various borders in the contemporary world that is characterised by extensive and rapid movements of people. It addresses this need by bringing together historical and contemporary accounts and critical examinations of the displaced, by articulating the commonalities in their lived experiences. It accomplishes the task of charting a new path in displacement studies by offering a number of studies from interdisciplinary and diverse methodological approaches comprising ethnographic and qualitative research and literary interpretations to emphasise that although the forms and conditions of mobility are highly divergent, individual experiences of displacement and placelessness offer a critical challenge to the artificial categorisations of people's movements. Each chapter adds insights into the different configurations of displacement and placement, and offers fresh interpretations of migration and dislocation in today's rapidly changing world. The contributors critically examine a variety of displacement processes and experiences in the context of war, tourism, neoliberal policies of development, and the impact of various agro-forestry policies. They focus on a range of countries, enabling a thorough comparative analysis in terms of scope and range of examples and methods of analysis. This book makes an original contribution to the growing body of literature on displacement, and will appeal to a wide readership including advanced undergraduates, and graduate students and professors in disciplines such as human geography, development studies, sociology and anthropology, regional studies and comparative impact assessment.

Social science research is emerging on a range of issues around large and small-scale mining, connecting them to broader social, cultural, political, historical and economic factors rather than purely measuring the environmental impacts of mining. Within this broader context of global scholarly attention on extractive industries, this book explores two specific contexts: the cultural politics of coal and coal mining, within the context of one particular country, India, which is the third largest coal producer in the world. Both contexts are special; with its separate Ministry, coal occupies pride of place in contemporary India, shaping the energy future and influencing the economic and political milieu of the country. The supremacy attributed to coal mining in contemporary India represents how ’coal nationalism’ has replaced ’coal colonialism’ in the country, turning this commodity into an icon, a national symbol. In recent years the extraction of coal in forest-covered resource peripheries has dispossessed and pauperised many tribal and rural communities who have used these resource-rich lands for their livelihoods for generations. The combustion of coal to produce electricity constitutes the compelling need, and the factor that prevents the Indian state from fully engaging with the impending realities of a climate-changed future. All these reasons make the timing of this book of crucial importance. In particular, The Coal Nation explores the complex history of coal in India; from its colonial legacies to contemporary cultural and social impacts of mining; land ownership and moral resource rights; protective legislation for coal as well as for the indigenous and local communities; the question of legality, illegitimacy and illicit mining and of social justice. Presenting cutting-edge multidisciplinary social science research on coal and mining in India, The Coal Nation initiates a productive dialogue amongst academics and between them and activists.