The Dissertation Committee for Alex Ray Dodson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Bangladesh’s Forest NGOscape: Visions of Mandi Indigeneity, Competing Eco-Imaginaries, and Faltering Entrepreneurs in the Climate of Suspicion Committee: ______________________________ Kamran Ali, Supervisor ______________________________ Kaushik Ghosh ______________________________ Ward Keeler ______________________________ Kathleen Stewart ______________________________ Pauline Strong ______________________________ Willem van Schendel Bangladesh’s Forest NGOscape: Visions of Mandi Indigeneity, Competing Eco-Imaginaries, and Faltering Entrepreneurs in the Climate of Suspicion by Alex Ray Dodson, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2013 Dedicated to the people of the Modhupur Bon Onchol. Acknowledgments An extraordinary number of people have helped me along the way to make this research a reality. Firstly, I would like to thank the funding organizations: the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, the South Asia Institute at UT, the Department of State, the Institute of International Education, and the American Institute for Bangladesh Studies. Thank you to Peggy Sanday and Carol Muller at the University of Pennsylvania, who inspired me early on and got me to engage critically and ethically with anthropology. Thank you to my committee – Katie, Polly, Ward, Kaushik, and Willem, and especially to Kamran for sticking with me all of these years, reading innumerable drafts, and encouraging me through my insecurities. All of your comments at the defense were invaluable to my considerations of this project’s future. Thanks for writing help to a semester dissertation workshop at UT, particularly the thorough and helpful early readings and comments of Lok Siu and Courtney Morris. Special thank you to Emily Lynch for being an invaluable writing partner, a fountain of encouragement, help, and valuable introspection, and a frank advisor and dear friend throughout graduate school, and an especially great companion this past year. In Dhaka, thank you to Philip for suggestions and conversations on our areas of mutual interest, and endless generosity in the use of SEHD’s library and offices as a home base of research in Dhaka. Special thank you to Partha for always being there as a iv friend and adviser along the way. Thanks for language learning and help with family accommodations to the Bangla Language Institute in Baridhara, especially Tony Stewart and Mahfuz Zaman, and my teachers Atif, Setu, Sudipto, and Afia. Thanks also to the Nokmandi Community Centre, and to dear Sujit and Onjona for your love and care for our family. The people who helped me in Modhupur are too numerous to count, much less to name. Thanks to all who had the welcoming patience and openness to discuss their lives, perspectives, and communities with a prodding anthropologist. Special thanks to Chondon Mangshan for his friendship and guidance, and to Ajoy and Eugene at JAUP for letting me into their world. Thanks to Father Homrich for giving me a place to stay for a bit, and especially to Olin for taking me around for many a meeting and conversation. Thank you to Dr. Baker for interesting conversation and insights, and an entirely inspiring leftist perspective on health services for the poor. Thank you also to Nebul and Babul Daru for housing and feeding me week after week. And most special and unreserved thanks to the extraordinary generosity of their time, space, and spirit to Robi, Nirmala, Adnan, Jogendro and family, and Jui, without whom my research definitely would not have been possible. Thank you to my brother Neal and new sister Ashley for your support along the way, and in transporting our big guy across the world. Thank you to Chris for helping to transport the boys to Bangladesh for the initial move and helping us get settled in, and for unquestioning and unconditional help with the care of our boys. Unending thanks to v Mom and Dad for your transporting the big guy too, and for your financial support to get my whole gaggle out to Bangladesh with me, as well as your unwavering support of learning in my life from birth to the present. Thank you to my little boys for your endless adaptability in moving across the world, and especially to Xavier who was old enough to comprehend how much he had to adapt, and for his willingness to go with the flow despite the many challenges. Finally, undying thanks to my wife, Brigid, to whom I could never possibly express enough gratitude for her support emotionally and financially, and being my constant companion through the crazy and often thankless tumult of her husband’s pursuit of graduate study in anthropology. I could not have done it without you. Some names of people and organizations have been changed in the writing of this document, while some other more public figure and organization names have not. Those intimately familiar with the area will likely be able to make some connections as to who is who. Although I have done my best to keep representations as accurate as I saw them, any inaccuracies or shortcomings are, of course, my own and not of my informants or friends. vi Bangladesh’s Forest NGOscape: Visions of Mandi Indigeneity, Competing Eco-Imaginaries, and Faltering Entrepreneurs in the Climate of Suspicion Alex Ray Dodson, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Kamran Asdar Ali The assemblage of competing development programs I call an “NGOscape”, effective in Bangladesh’s forest spaces, is a window into understanding both local and extra-local imaginings of the future of these spaces. By tracing the close interaction of three of the most prominent forces in operation in Bangladesh’s forest NGOscapes: indigeneity, environmentalism, and entrepreneurialism, I discuss how the government and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) work to increase management and securitization of these forces. Through ethnography and close analysis of the minority Mandi community, and NGOs in the capital city of Dhaka and in rural Modhupur, Tangail, I interpret Modhupur as a vital and telling site for examining the close interdependence of these three themes. Adivasi (“aboriginal”) folklorization and representation is deployed by Mandi leaders and NGOs, and provides a space for Mandi internal debates about authenticity, vii representation, modernity, and the way forward. Neoliberal imaginings centered on transforming Mandi livelihoods into something more appropriately modern are realized on the ground, evidenced by Alternative Income Generation (AIG) programs that push for market integration, and attempt to utilize claims about adivasi indigeneity to advance a security-management paradigm, national stability, and civic responsibility. Young activists and environmentalists based in Dhaka are crucial forces in promoting the broader development and NGO agenda, utilizing the themes of environmental responsibility and progressive conservation programs. Additionally, development agendas are complicated by other factors, such as eco-tourism trends that seek to indoctrinate the Mandi and other rural actors into acceptable and responsible ways of managing environment, while also relying on national pride. These competing forces rely on national pride and social shaming to transform rural Bangladeshis from being somehow “backward” into more desirable, modern subjects. Yet severe distrust within a larger “climate of suspicion,” between adivasi leaders, activists, and the state ultimately disrupt the fluidity of development practices at the local level. The result places various actors in precarious positions, left to interpret and be interpreted into development, NGO, and state-based objectives. viii Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………..…………………………...1 Chapter 1 – Theoretical Outline…………………………………………....31 Chapter 2 – The NGOscape Setting: JAUP, SEHD, Enviro- indigeneity, and the Climate of Suspicion...............................................................................84 Chapter 3 – Wangala, Representation, and Cultural Barriers to “Progress”………………………………………………………...……….139 Chapter 4 – Generating Income-Generators – The Alternatives……….…197 Chapter 5 – Forest Preservation, Tourism, and Eco-Park Walls…...…..…239 Chapter 6 – Conclusion: Robi’s Vision and The Climate of Suspicion.….300 Bibliography………………….………………………………………...…344 Vita………………………………………………………………………..353 ix Introduction This dissertation is about the politics of indigeneity in place. It is about adivasihood and Mandi1-ness as well. How do identities and subjecthoods such as adivasi2 or environmentalist get negotiated with regard to environmental conservation, neoliberal development, and the form of the NGO? It is the story of Modhupur, but many of its themes and valences will sound familiar to those interested in contemporary adivasi politics across South Asia, and “native” and indigenous politics in other parts of the world as well. When articulating a vision of adivasi politics or politics of indigeneity, we should proceed with caution, not least of which because we risk falling into a trap of trying to speak our own politics through that of a celebrated “native”. If we see in indigeneity a radical, unrealized potential of challenge to the developmentalist state, we must also reflexively analyze our own investment