University of Washington Press Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India (Culture, Place, and Nature)

The nineteenth-century discovery of oil in the eastern Himalayan foothills, together with the establishment of tea plantations and other extractive industries, continues to have a profound impact on life in the region. In the Indian states of Assam and Nagaland, everyday militarization, violence, and the scramble for natural resources regulate the lives of Naga, Ahom, and Adivasi people, as well as migrants from elsewhere in the region, as they struggle to find peace and work. Anthropologist Dolly Kikon uses in-depth ethnographic accounts to address the complexity of Northeast India, a region between Southeast Asia and China where boundaries and borders are made, disputed, and maintained. Bringing a fresh and exciting direction to borderland studies, she explores the social bonds established through practices of resource extraction and the tensions these relations generate, focusing on peoples’ love for the landscape and for the state, as well as for family, friends, and neighbors. Living with Oil and Coal illuminates questions of citizenship, social justice, and environmental politics that are shared by communities worldwide. Review [A] fantastic read, a book that speaks to scholars as well as general public. Kikon combines grounded ethnography with theoretical elabortation, setting a new standard of excellence for the anthropology of the North East.--Economic and Political Weekly [A] beautiful and gripping account of the intimate layers of life, vio-lence and sovereignty pattered throughout the militarised carbon landscape of the foothills of Assam and Nagaland in North East India.--Postcolonial Studies [E]vocatively captures the intricacies and intimacies of daily life on this militarized resource frontier, drawing from stories, oral histories, and local myths, in spaces ranging from coal mines to oil rigs, rice fields to weekly markets and military checkpoints. Throughout, the book remains focused on the fragile and contested intimacies forged through trade, labor sharing, and love affairs across boundaries that are at once social, political, and ecological.--PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review The strength of Kikon's work is...in the creativity and skill of its synthesis of existing theoretical work, applied to a new context and matched with local knowledge.--Anthropologica Kikon's ethnography is rich, diverse, and makes an engaging read.-- (01/01/2020) This is a versatile book that would be accessible for undergraduate audiences, yet contains complexity that would be of great interest for graduate audiences and scholars as well.-- (01/01/2020) In Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India, anthropologist Dolly Kikon offers a rich account of life in the midst of a landscape defined by multiple overlapping extractive industries and plantation economies, and of the social relations through which a resource frontier comes into being.--New Books in Anthropology podcast Review A richly detailed ethnographic study from the vantage point of the hill people that shows how the society, economy, and polity functions are seen [in Northeast India] by the people living there. Author: Arupjyoti Saikia, author of Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 From the Author Dolly Kikon is senior lecturer in the Anthropology and Development Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Life and Dignity: Women’s Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Dimapur (Nagaland) and Experiences of Naga Women in Armed Conflict: Narratives from a Militarized Society. About the Author Dolly Kikon is senior lecturer in the Anthropology and Development Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Life and Dignity: Women's Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Dimapur (Nagaland) and Experiences of Naga Women in Armed Conflict: Narratives from a Militarized Society.