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Land is not simply the solid surface of the earth. As instantiations of territory, property, the sacred, history and memory, as sites of authority, access and exclusion, land is always in the making. The state and market mobilise land for 'development'. They are also stretched into socially compromised, shadowy arrangements while effecting order. Political practices can contest such processes, but may equally become co-opted. The making of land thus reveals the making of 'India' itself.
Sommario
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Land, in the making
- Chapter 2. Land-making and state-making
- Chapter 3. Taking land to market
- Chapter 4. Grounding the market
- Chapter 5. Making the political
- Chapter 6. Doing P(p)olitics
- Conclusion. Indistinction, entwining, making and re-making
- References
Info autore
Nikita Sud is Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford. She is Governing Body Fellow and Vicegerent of Wolfson College. Her widely reviewed book Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and The State: A Biography of Gujarat was also published by Oxford University Press (2012). Besides teaching and academic writing, she regularly comments on politics, development, and the environment in the media.
Riassunto
What is land and how is it made? In this penetrating new study of sites in western, eastern and southern India, Nikita Sud argues persuasively that land is not simply the solid surface of the earth. It is best understood as a materially and conceptually dynamic realm, intimately tied to the social. As such, land transitions across porous registers of territory, property, authority, the sacred, history and memory, and contested access and exclusion. While states, markets and politics in post-liberalisation India try to make land suitable for 'growth' and 'development', Sud reveals that the relationship between the soil and institutions is never straightforward. A state attempting to order a layered topography is frequently stretched into shadowy domains of informality and unsanctioned practices. A market may be advanced, but remains precariously embedded in sociality. Politics could challenge the land-making of the state and markets. It may also effect compromises. Attempts at constructing a durable landed order thus reveal our own (dis)orders. In attempting to 'make' the land, Sud's intriguing study shows how the land simultaneously 'makes' us.
Testo aggiuntivo
'The Making of Land is a brilliant book about an old theme: land and what it implies for broader social life, and vice versa.'
-Saturnino M. Borras Jr., professor of agrarian studies, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Netherlands
