Kenneth Bo Nielsen | University of Oslo (original) (raw)

Papers by Kenneth Bo Nielsen

India has over the recent decade witnessed a spate of land transfers as Special Economic Zones, e... more India has over the recent decade witnessed a spate of land transfers as Special Economic Zones, extractive industries, or real estate dispossess farmers, land owners, and indigenous groups of their land. As a result, struggles over land have emerged with force in many locations, almost across India. Yet while the political economy and legal aspects of India's new 'land wars' are well documented, the discourses and identities mobilised against large-scale forcible land transfers receive less scholarly attention. We suggest 'the regional identity politics' of India's current land wars to explain the important role of place-based identities in garnering broad, public support for popular anti-dispossession movements. We explore how land, and its produce, are mobilised by anti-dispossession movements in the Indian states of Goa and West Bengal. The movements mobilised land and food not as emblematic of structural changes in the political economy, but first and foremost within a symbolic field in which they came to stand metaphorically for regional forms of belonging and identity under threat. While reinforcing regional solidarity, these identities also contributed to the fragmented and often highly localised nature of India's current land wars, while also potentially disrupting efforts to sustain organising in the long term. To attract industrial investments, boost economic growth, and create a world class infrastructure, India passed a new Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act in 2005. This act established a legal framework for the creation of geographic areas governed by distinct regulatory regimes in which taxes and other bureaucratic burdens on business activity

The largescale transfer of land from rural communities to private corporations has become a defin... more The largescale transfer of land from rural communities to private corporations has become a defining feature of India's development trajectory. These land transfers have given rise to a multitude of new 'land wars' as dispossessed groups have struggled to retain their land. Yet while much has been written about the political economy of development that underpins this new form of dispossession, the ways in which those threatened with dispossession have sought to mobilize have to a lesser extent been subject to close, ethnographic scrutiny. This article argues that an 'everyday politics' perspective can enhance our understanding of India's new land wars, using a case from Singur as the starting point.

South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies

The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 2009

Among the many talents which make him one of the great anthropologists of our time, [he] has one ... more Among the many talents which make him one of the great anthropologists of our time, [he] has one which gives a singular flavour to his work. He has the authentic esthetic touch, rather uncommon in our profession. This is what we call in French flair: the gift of singling out those facts, observations, and documents which possess an especially rich meaning, sometimes undisclosed at first, but likely to become evident as one ponders the implications woven into the material. A crop harvested by [him], even if he does not choose to mill it himself, is always capable of providing lasting nourishment for many generations of students (Levi-Strauss 1996, 327). Sådan begynder et godt hyldestessay! Og jeg må indrømme, at dette er fire saetninger jeg gerne selv skulle have forfattet til aere for Arild. Men ordene er ikke mine. For havde de vaeret mine, havde jeg naturligvis ikke talt om flair i forbindelse med Arild, men derimod om Fingerspitzengefühl eller 'kontekstuel sensitivitet' -begreber som Arild selv har vaeret med til at bringe ind i Sydasiensforskningen (Ruud 2003, 178). Ordene er Claude Levi-Strauss' fra 1960 fra en samling essays forfattet til aere for Paul Radin, og Levi-Strauss illusterer til fulde, at når man skriver hyldestessays skal man traede varsomt.

The nature of global development has changed substantially over the past three decades in step wi... more The nature of global development has changed substantially over the past three decades in step with the intensified globalisation of capitalism and its imperatives of growth and expanding consumption. Most significant is the ongoing shift in the balance of the global economy towards the South in general and the East in particular. As the ‘Rise of the South’ materialises, a number of emerging economies are moving beyond their roles as factories of the world and are turning their focus towards expanding domestic markets. The emergence of high-consuming middle classes in these countries represents a profound challenge for global sustainability. When coupled with the as-yet unsuccessful efforts to constrain the consumption in the mature capitalist countries, rising global consumption constitutes one of the greatest challenges to sustainable development. Neither development theory nor sustainability policy has adequately acknowledged surging global consumption. How do we best understand the changes behind the dramatic increase in consumption? Drawing on social practice theory as well as the political economy of capitalist development, this article analyses the social and environmental dimensions of increasing consumption in the South, using India and Vietnam as case studies.

The pace of socio-economic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been ... more The pace of socio-economic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been formidable. In this volume we are concerned with examining how these transformations have played out at the level of everyday life to influence the lives of Indian women, and gender relations more broadly. The 15 chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India conceive of these ongoing everyday transformatory churnings as undercurrents that play out well below the radar screen of the national and international media, and beyond the realm of the spectacular. To analyse these everyday transformatory churnings our authors look closely and ethnographically at a diversity of everyday 'sites of change in which macro-structural processes of social transformation interface with everyday life-worlds to generate new contestations and contradictions that impinge directly on the everyday lives of ordinary Indian women, and on the relations between genders. In doing so, they combine to identify the ambiguous, contradictory and contested co-existence of discrepant gendered norms, values and visions in a society caught up in wider processes of social transformation. They also provide us with some cause for cautious optimism. Thus, while much of the current debate on women and social change in India is, for very good reasons, dominated by the pessimism triggered by the apparent increase in brutal sexualised violence against women, and the very low child sex ratio that makes India 'a terrible place for girls cf. also Jha et al. 2006;, the chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India paint a more composite and contradictory picture. The past 10 to 20 years have seen an increasing number of women moving out of the domestic domain and into the 'public' domains of education, work and politics (Reddy 2012); female literacy has gone up; more women pursue higher education and are an increasingly common sight on buses, in cafes, markets and other public spaces in the big cities; new and affordable communication technologies blur the gendered boundaries between the private and the public; there is greater participation of women in economic activity in the cities; the large number of women elected to village and municipal councils across the country give women a permanent political voice; there is a strong women's movement; and in some states women now 'out-vote' the men. These changes, we argue in this book, are deeply implicated in everyday lives and have had a considerable, if contradictory, impact on how Indian women and men live, work and dream. We have organised the 15 chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India under three topical headings: (1) Work, technology, aspirations; (2) democracy and the developmental state; and (3) assertions and activism. The key questions that we address include: How does women's ability to participate in an increasingly globalised and volatile Indian labour market alter the terrain upon which gender relations are negotiated and organised? How does the entry of new technologies into everyday life domains alter the relationship between men and women, and between the private and the public? How do global cultural flows impinge on local imaginaries and desires to reconfigure subjectivities? Does the growing policy focus on maternal health change local views of women and motherhood? How is contemporary Indian feminism articulated and contested? And how does women's grassroots political activism reconfigure gender relations and practices?

This article examines the controversy over land transfers for two proposed but now deadlocked ind... more This article examines the controversy over land transfers for two proposed but now deadlocked industrial projects in India. Both projects – one in Andhra Pradesh, the other in West Bengal – were initially presented as key to the future development of each state and given strong backing by respective state governments. They also appeared well-financed by technically competent, Indian private sector companies, indicating that swift implementation should have been expected. However, once strong opposition emerged from the potential displacees, supported by both political and civil society, both projects failed to come to fruition. Restitution of the land already acquired for these hibernating projects remains to be carried out however – the land at present lies vacant and is neither used for industrialization, nor for any other productive purpose. We characterize this stalemated form of development as ‘development deadlock’ that in effect benefits nobody. Key to explaining this outcome is, we argue, the significant uncertainty and complexity that arises when many different groups respectively promote and oppose a project within a fractured politico-administrative and legal system marred by considerable ambiguity. The present deadlock is seen as a combination of neglect and nurture by the actors involved in land struggles.

This article examines the dynamics of judicialisation and dejudicialisation of subaltern resistan... more This article examines the dynamics of judicialisation and dejudicialisation of subaltern resistance in the context of a prolonged anti-land acquisition struggle in Singur in the Indian state of West Bengal. Taking its point of departure in a detailed, chronological ethnographic account of the Singur movement and its shifting engagement with the language and institutions of law, the paper demonstrates how the local resistance to a land acquisition for the purpose of setting up a new automobile factory oscillated strategically back and forth between a multitude of sites of contestation. This strategic oscillation was, in turn, highly sensitive to the broader context in which the movement was carried out, and to the shifting terrain of the local and regional political landscape in particular. The attractiveness of invoking the language and institutions of law as part of their struggle therefore significantly depended on the attractiveness of other modalities of resistance at a given moment. In conclusion, the article uses the Singur case to critically interrogate and rethink the seminal work of Partha Chatterjee on political society and the politics of the governed in postcolonial India.

Abstract: This article explores the ambiguity inherent in the relationship between social activ... more Abstract: This article explores the ambiguity inherent in the relationship between social activism and politics in West Bengal. I use a detailed account of the career of singer-activist turned politician Kabir Suman to examine the activist’s view of himself and of politics, as well of how the porous boundary between activism and politics is both blurred and crossable. The fact that activists possess a kind of political capital useful within the framework of a political party may facilitate their entry into electoral politics. Yet as the article demonstrates, the activist may sometimes only be able to retain his activist credentials by sacrificing his political career. In addition, the article seeks to conceptualise the social activist as a particular type of political figure. I do so by locating the study of Kabir Suman within an emerging body of literature on political leadership in India. I argue that while the case of Kabir Suman may not be paradigmatic, his ‘activist’ style of leadership challenges certain contemporary classifications of political leadership in India.

When the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors launched its new ‘people’s car’ in 2008 it was widel... more When the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors launched its new ‘people’s car’ in 2008 it was widely predicted to revolutionise automobility in India. Yet seven years after the launch, the car has barely made an impact on the Indian car market and is widely regarded as a failure. This article offers a detailed study of the rise and fall of India’s ‘people’s car’. Based on a mapping of the changing popular representations and symbolic imaginaries that attach to the car as a means to mobility and an object of identity and social status, we suggest that the car failed neither because it was mediocre, nor because it remained economically out of reach for most Indians. Rather, we argue that its insertion into the lower ranks of a powerful status hierarchy of identity-defining objects precluded it from adequately tapping into new and hegemonic forms of consumer aspiration in ‘New India’.

This article explores how, in the context of an unfolding process of neoliberalisation in India, ... more This article explores how, in the context of an unfolding process of neoliberalisation in India, new terrains of resistance are crystallising for subaltern groups seeking to contest the marginalising consequences of this process. We focus particularly on the emergence of India’s ‘new rights agenda’ through a study of the making of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2013. Conceiving of the emergence of the ‘new rights agenda’ as a hegemonic process, we decipher how law-making is a complex and contradictory practice seeking to negotiate a compromise equilibrium between, on the one hand, subaltern groups vulnerable to marginalisation and capable of mobilisation; and, on the other, dominant groups whose economic interests are linked to the exploitation of the spaces of accumulation recently pried open by market-oriented reforms. The negotiation of this equilibrium, we suggest, is ultimately intended to facilitate India’s process of neoliberalisation.

India has over the recent decade witnessed a spate of land transfers as Special Economic Zones, e... more India has over the recent decade witnessed a spate of land transfers as Special Economic Zones, extractive industries, or real estate dispossess farmers, land owners, and indigenous groups of their land. As a result, struggles over land have emerged with force in many locations, almost across India. Yet while the political economy and legal aspects of India's new 'land wars' are well documented, the discourses and identities mobilised against large-scale forcible land transfers receive less scholarly attention. We suggest 'the regional identity politics' of India's current land wars to explain the important role of place-based identities in garnering broad, public support for popular anti-dispossession movements. We explore how land, and its produce, are mobilised by anti-dispossession movements in the Indian states of Goa and West Bengal. The movements mobilised land and food not as emblematic of structural changes in the political economy, but first and foremost within a symbolic field in which they came to stand metaphorically for regional forms of belonging and identity under threat. While reinforcing regional solidarity, these identities also contributed to the fragmented and often highly localised nature of India's current land wars, while also potentially disrupting efforts to sustain organising in the long term. To attract industrial investments, boost economic growth, and create a world class infrastructure, India passed a new Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act in 2005. This act established a legal framework for the creation of geographic areas governed by distinct regulatory regimes in which taxes and other bureaucratic burdens on business activity

The largescale transfer of land from rural communities to private corporations has become a defin... more The largescale transfer of land from rural communities to private corporations has become a defining feature of India's development trajectory. These land transfers have given rise to a multitude of new 'land wars' as dispossessed groups have struggled to retain their land. Yet while much has been written about the political economy of development that underpins this new form of dispossession, the ways in which those threatened with dispossession have sought to mobilize have to a lesser extent been subject to close, ethnographic scrutiny. This article argues that an 'everyday politics' perspective can enhance our understanding of India's new land wars, using a case from Singur as the starting point.

South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies

The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 2009

Among the many talents which make him one of the great anthropologists of our time, [he] has one ... more Among the many talents which make him one of the great anthropologists of our time, [he] has one which gives a singular flavour to his work. He has the authentic esthetic touch, rather uncommon in our profession. This is what we call in French flair: the gift of singling out those facts, observations, and documents which possess an especially rich meaning, sometimes undisclosed at first, but likely to become evident as one ponders the implications woven into the material. A crop harvested by [him], even if he does not choose to mill it himself, is always capable of providing lasting nourishment for many generations of students (Levi-Strauss 1996, 327). Sådan begynder et godt hyldestessay! Og jeg må indrømme, at dette er fire saetninger jeg gerne selv skulle have forfattet til aere for Arild. Men ordene er ikke mine. For havde de vaeret mine, havde jeg naturligvis ikke talt om flair i forbindelse med Arild, men derimod om Fingerspitzengefühl eller 'kontekstuel sensitivitet' -begreber som Arild selv har vaeret med til at bringe ind i Sydasiensforskningen (Ruud 2003, 178). Ordene er Claude Levi-Strauss' fra 1960 fra en samling essays forfattet til aere for Paul Radin, og Levi-Strauss illusterer til fulde, at når man skriver hyldestessays skal man traede varsomt.

The nature of global development has changed substantially over the past three decades in step wi... more The nature of global development has changed substantially over the past three decades in step with the intensified globalisation of capitalism and its imperatives of growth and expanding consumption. Most significant is the ongoing shift in the balance of the global economy towards the South in general and the East in particular. As the ‘Rise of the South’ materialises, a number of emerging economies are moving beyond their roles as factories of the world and are turning their focus towards expanding domestic markets. The emergence of high-consuming middle classes in these countries represents a profound challenge for global sustainability. When coupled with the as-yet unsuccessful efforts to constrain the consumption in the mature capitalist countries, rising global consumption constitutes one of the greatest challenges to sustainable development. Neither development theory nor sustainability policy has adequately acknowledged surging global consumption. How do we best understand the changes behind the dramatic increase in consumption? Drawing on social practice theory as well as the political economy of capitalist development, this article analyses the social and environmental dimensions of increasing consumption in the South, using India and Vietnam as case studies.

The pace of socio-economic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been ... more The pace of socio-economic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been formidable. In this volume we are concerned with examining how these transformations have played out at the level of everyday life to influence the lives of Indian women, and gender relations more broadly. The 15 chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India conceive of these ongoing everyday transformatory churnings as undercurrents that play out well below the radar screen of the national and international media, and beyond the realm of the spectacular. To analyse these everyday transformatory churnings our authors look closely and ethnographically at a diversity of everyday 'sites of change in which macro-structural processes of social transformation interface with everyday life-worlds to generate new contestations and contradictions that impinge directly on the everyday lives of ordinary Indian women, and on the relations between genders. In doing so, they combine to identify the ambiguous, contradictory and contested co-existence of discrepant gendered norms, values and visions in a society caught up in wider processes of social transformation. They also provide us with some cause for cautious optimism. Thus, while much of the current debate on women and social change in India is, for very good reasons, dominated by the pessimism triggered by the apparent increase in brutal sexualised violence against women, and the very low child sex ratio that makes India 'a terrible place for girls cf. also Jha et al. 2006;, the chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India paint a more composite and contradictory picture. The past 10 to 20 years have seen an increasing number of women moving out of the domestic domain and into the 'public' domains of education, work and politics (Reddy 2012); female literacy has gone up; more women pursue higher education and are an increasingly common sight on buses, in cafes, markets and other public spaces in the big cities; new and affordable communication technologies blur the gendered boundaries between the private and the public; there is greater participation of women in economic activity in the cities; the large number of women elected to village and municipal councils across the country give women a permanent political voice; there is a strong women's movement; and in some states women now 'out-vote' the men. These changes, we argue in this book, are deeply implicated in everyday lives and have had a considerable, if contradictory, impact on how Indian women and men live, work and dream. We have organised the 15 chapters in Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India under three topical headings: (1) Work, technology, aspirations; (2) democracy and the developmental state; and (3) assertions and activism. The key questions that we address include: How does women's ability to participate in an increasingly globalised and volatile Indian labour market alter the terrain upon which gender relations are negotiated and organised? How does the entry of new technologies into everyday life domains alter the relationship between men and women, and between the private and the public? How do global cultural flows impinge on local imaginaries and desires to reconfigure subjectivities? Does the growing policy focus on maternal health change local views of women and motherhood? How is contemporary Indian feminism articulated and contested? And how does women's grassroots political activism reconfigure gender relations and practices?

This article examines the controversy over land transfers for two proposed but now deadlocked ind... more This article examines the controversy over land transfers for two proposed but now deadlocked industrial projects in India. Both projects – one in Andhra Pradesh, the other in West Bengal – were initially presented as key to the future development of each state and given strong backing by respective state governments. They also appeared well-financed by technically competent, Indian private sector companies, indicating that swift implementation should have been expected. However, once strong opposition emerged from the potential displacees, supported by both political and civil society, both projects failed to come to fruition. Restitution of the land already acquired for these hibernating projects remains to be carried out however – the land at present lies vacant and is neither used for industrialization, nor for any other productive purpose. We characterize this stalemated form of development as ‘development deadlock’ that in effect benefits nobody. Key to explaining this outcome is, we argue, the significant uncertainty and complexity that arises when many different groups respectively promote and oppose a project within a fractured politico-administrative and legal system marred by considerable ambiguity. The present deadlock is seen as a combination of neglect and nurture by the actors involved in land struggles.

This article examines the dynamics of judicialisation and dejudicialisation of subaltern resistan... more This article examines the dynamics of judicialisation and dejudicialisation of subaltern resistance in the context of a prolonged anti-land acquisition struggle in Singur in the Indian state of West Bengal. Taking its point of departure in a detailed, chronological ethnographic account of the Singur movement and its shifting engagement with the language and institutions of law, the paper demonstrates how the local resistance to a land acquisition for the purpose of setting up a new automobile factory oscillated strategically back and forth between a multitude of sites of contestation. This strategic oscillation was, in turn, highly sensitive to the broader context in which the movement was carried out, and to the shifting terrain of the local and regional political landscape in particular. The attractiveness of invoking the language and institutions of law as part of their struggle therefore significantly depended on the attractiveness of other modalities of resistance at a given moment. In conclusion, the article uses the Singur case to critically interrogate and rethink the seminal work of Partha Chatterjee on political society and the politics of the governed in postcolonial India.

Abstract: This article explores the ambiguity inherent in the relationship between social activ... more Abstract: This article explores the ambiguity inherent in the relationship between social activism and politics in West Bengal. I use a detailed account of the career of singer-activist turned politician Kabir Suman to examine the activist’s view of himself and of politics, as well of how the porous boundary between activism and politics is both blurred and crossable. The fact that activists possess a kind of political capital useful within the framework of a political party may facilitate their entry into electoral politics. Yet as the article demonstrates, the activist may sometimes only be able to retain his activist credentials by sacrificing his political career. In addition, the article seeks to conceptualise the social activist as a particular type of political figure. I do so by locating the study of Kabir Suman within an emerging body of literature on political leadership in India. I argue that while the case of Kabir Suman may not be paradigmatic, his ‘activist’ style of leadership challenges certain contemporary classifications of political leadership in India.

When the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors launched its new ‘people’s car’ in 2008 it was widel... more When the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors launched its new ‘people’s car’ in 2008 it was widely predicted to revolutionise automobility in India. Yet seven years after the launch, the car has barely made an impact on the Indian car market and is widely regarded as a failure. This article offers a detailed study of the rise and fall of India’s ‘people’s car’. Based on a mapping of the changing popular representations and symbolic imaginaries that attach to the car as a means to mobility and an object of identity and social status, we suggest that the car failed neither because it was mediocre, nor because it remained economically out of reach for most Indians. Rather, we argue that its insertion into the lower ranks of a powerful status hierarchy of identity-defining objects precluded it from adequately tapping into new and hegemonic forms of consumer aspiration in ‘New India’.

This article explores how, in the context of an unfolding process of neoliberalisation in India, ... more This article explores how, in the context of an unfolding process of neoliberalisation in India, new terrains of resistance are crystallising for subaltern groups seeking to contest the marginalising consequences of this process. We focus particularly on the emergence of India’s ‘new rights agenda’ through a study of the making of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2013. Conceiving of the emergence of the ‘new rights agenda’ as a hegemonic process, we decipher how law-making is a complex and contradictory practice seeking to negotiate a compromise equilibrium between, on the one hand, subaltern groups vulnerable to marginalisation and capable of mobilisation; and, on the other, dominant groups whose economic interests are linked to the exploitation of the spaces of accumulation recently pried open by market-oriented reforms. The negotiation of this equilibrium, we suggest, is ultimately intended to facilitate India’s process of neoliberalisation.

Rapid industrialisation is promoted by many as the most feasible way of rejuvenating the Indian e... more Rapid industrialisation is promoted by many as the most feasible way of rejuvenating the Indian economy, and as a way of generating employment on a large scale. At the same time, the transfer of land from rural communities and indigenous groups for industrial parks, mining, or Special Economic Zones has emerged as perhaps the most explosive issue in India over the past decade. Industrialising Rural India sheds light on crucial political and social dynamics that unfold today as India seeks to accelerate industrial growth. The volume examines key aspects that are implicated in current processes of industrialisation in rural India, including the evolution of industrial and related policies; the contested role of land transfers, dispossession, and the destruction of the natural resource base more generally; and the popular resistance against industrial projects, extractive industries and Special Economic Zones.

Combining the work of scholars long established in their respective fields with the refreshing approach of younger scholars, Industrialising Rural India seeks to chart new ways in the study of contemporary industrialisation and its associated challenges in India. This cutting-edge interdisciplinary work will be of interest to scholars working on industrial development and land questions in India and South Asia alongside those with an interest in sociology , political science and development research.