Routledge Readings on Colonial to Contemporary Northeastern India

Routledge Readings on Northeastern India: Colonial Encounters, Customary Practices, Gender, Livelihoods presents some of the finest essays on a region that stretches across the Northeastern Himalaya, eight Indian States and many tribal and non-tribal peoples. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the northeastern India, from colonial and missionary encounter to contemporary security and developmental issues in South Asia. The book covers several critical themes and unravels the complexities fraught by the unique biogeography and socio-political history of the region. The fifteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, examine gender, community: customary law and practices, land, agriculture, livelihoods, work, health, and education. This multi-disciplinary volume interweaves geography and history, culture and politics; the contested construction of identities, communities and nationalities; the political interplay of ethnicities and resource appropriation in a modernizing, globalizing economy; conflicts and violence in highly-militarized spaces. It includes engaged and insightful perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/or policy discourse of the subject. Routledge Readings on Northeastern India brings together a cluster of key readings to capture important research directions, policy suggestions, current trends, and aspects of history and future trajectories in the humanities and social sciences. It will serve as essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, practitioners and the general reader interested in a nuanced understanding of India's northeastern region, and especially those in South Asian studies, Northeast India studies, area studies, history, politics and international relations, labour studies, conflict and peace studies, gender studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to those interested in public administration, development studies, environmental studies, law and human rights, regional literature, cultural studies, population studies, geography, and economics.

Sumi Krishna, an independent scholar and widely-published author on gender, environment, development and livelihoods, is former President of the Indian Association for Women's Studies, and is Series Editor of the Routledge Transition in Northeastern India series.

Introduction PART I. Colonial Encounters 1. Cast of Colonialism: Constructing the Peculiar: North East India 2. Practices of Sovereignty, Practices of the Market and Early Colonialism 3. What is Axamiya? Understanding an Interethnic Identity 4. War, Nationalisms and Conversions 5. Christian Missionaries and Colonialism in the Hills of Manipur PART II. Customary Law and Gendered Practices 6. The Resilience of Tribal Conflict Resolution Systems in North East India 7. Indigenous Methods of Conflict Resolution in Sikkim: A Case Study on the Dzuma 8. Mizo Customary Laws and the Discourse of Women's Rights 9. Text, Knowledge and Representation: Reading Gender in Sumi Marriage Practices PART III. Livelihoods and Labour 10. Labour and the Labour Market in North-East India: A Historical Exploration 11. Agrarian Relations and Institutional Diversity in Arunachal Pradesh 12. Why do Jhumiyas Jhum? Managing Change in the Uplands of Northeastern India 13. Gender, Food Security and Rice Farming in Tripura 14. Women's Employment in North East India: Trends and Patterns 15. The Moving City