INDIGENIST MOBILIZATION: ‘IDENTITY’ VERSUS ‘CLASS’ AFTER THE KERALA MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT? LUISA STEUR CEU eTD Collection PHD DISSERTATION DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY (BUDAPEST) 2011 CEU eTD Collection Cover photo: AGMS activist and Paniya workers at Aralam Farm, Kerala ( Luisa Steur, 2006) INDIGENIST MOBILIZATION: ‘IDENTITY’ VERSUS ‘CLASS’ AFTER THE KERALA MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT? by Luisa Steur Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Judit Bodnar Professor Prem Kumar Rajaram Budapest, Hungary CEU eTD Collection 2011 Statement STATEMENT I hereby state that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, 2011. CEU eTD Collection Indigenist mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘class’ after the Kerala model of development? i Abstract ABSTRACT This thesis analyses the recent rise of "adivasi" (indigenous/tribal) identity politics in the South Indian state of Kerala. It discusses the complex historical baggage and the political risks attached to the notion of "indigeneity" in Kerala and poses the question why despite its draw- backs, a notion of indigenous belonging came to replace the discourse of class as the primary framework through which adivasi workers now struggle for their rights. The thesis answers this question through an analysis of two inter-linked processes: firstly, the cyclical social movement dynamics of increasing disillusionment with - and distantiation from - the class-based platforms that led earlier struggles for emancipation but could not, once in government, structurally alter existing relations of power. And secondly, the political-economic processes associated with "neoliberalism" that changed the everyday working lives of subaltern groups in Kerala in such as way as to make them more amenable to indigenism than to the older forms of "class-based" mobilization. Through an analysis of these processes, this thesis makes a critical contribution to the wider debate on the causes and meanings of the global rise of indigenous identity politics at this juncture in the capitalist world system. CEU eTD Collection Indigenist mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘class’ after the Kerala model of development? ii Acknowledgments ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the years I have lived what writing an anthropology dissertation means. I have intensely experienced that anthropological research depends on building the connections for a productive intellectual collective with, ultimately, a joint political striving. Without the solidarity, embeddedness and intellectual confrontation from those friends who, spread over many places, have been part of this journey, the present work would have been meaningless. I thank all those who took me into their lives and politics in Kerala (not all of whom I can mention) -- in particular Jain Vasudevan, I. Ambika, Meera Moorkoth, K C Bindu, Sunny Kapikade. I thank Judit Bodnar, Prem Kumar Rajaram and all faculty shaping the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University. I thank all fellow- travelers with whom I experienced the CEU as the cosmopolitan focal point of an ambitious intervention in the social science shaping our world, including Olena Fedyuk, Elisabeth Schober, Gabor Halmai, Kacper Poblocki, Tibor Meszmann, Neda Deneva, Anca Simionca, Natalia Buier, Florin Poenaru, Alina Cucu, Florin Faje, Alexa Szoke, Justus Aungo, Stefan Guga, Swati Kamble, Dimitra Kofti, Raluca Pernes, Zoltan Dujisin, Bruno Mecset, Dora Vetta, Gergo Pulay, Mariya Ivancheva, Olga Echevskaya, Istvan Adorjan, Judit Veres. I thank Jonathan Friedman, Philip McMichael, Tania Li, Gavin Smith, Jens Lerche, Steve Reyna, David Mosse, Alpa Shah, Jan Breman, Ron Herring, Marc Edelman, and Hugo Gorringe for their engagement with and support for this project. I thank my friends at the Telluride House and at Cornell University for their solidarity and engagement, in particular Kathy Sexsmith, N Raj, Louise Silberling. I thank those who became part of this journey through my stay at the Centre for South Asia Studies at the University of Edinburgh: Anderson Jeremiah, Rebecca Archer, Suryakant Waghmore, Qudsiya Contractor, Paul Keene, Josse Antony, K C Bindu. I am grateful to Crispin Bates and Aya Ikegame, also for caring for me when I had dengue. I thank my Focaal comrades for the energy and joint intellectual purpose they provide. I thank Jean Blaylock, Christy Carmel and Sylvain Ropital for their support and contributions to the last stages of this PhD. CEU eTD Collection I thank Ine van Osta and Klaas Steur, my parents, for the support and freedom they gave me to pursue this PhD. And I thank Roeland Steur and Farilde Steur, my younger brother and sister, who were so much more part of this journey than their modesty suggests. Finally, I thank Don Kalb, radical part of all these paths and my never-ending inspiration. Indigenist mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘class’ after the Kerala model of development? iii Table of contents TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement....................................................................................................................................................................................i Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments...............................................................................................................................................................iii Maps..........................................................................................................................................................................................vii Part 1: Introduction................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Research in/on & beyond the capitalist world system.......................................2 1.1 Seeing like a Marxist: Theoretical approaches to indigenism .....................................................4 1.1.1 The clay-like qualities of Indigeneity.................................................................................. 5 1.1.2 Framing movements: From class to indigeneity.........................................................10 1.1.3 Critical struggles versus the global systemic ................................................................14 1.2 The minefields of methodology: On walking “correctly” ............................................................18 1.2.1 A dialectics of discovery and interpretation .................................................................19 1.2.2 Reflexivity and Academic labor............................................................................................25 1.3 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................................................30 Part 2: Adivasiness and its discontents......................................................................................................................33 Chapter 2: The “tribe” in world time ......................................................................................... 34 2.1 The tribe in an expanding world system.............................................................................................35 2.1.1 Imperialist inventions of the tribe: “I know one when I see one!”.....................36 2.1.2 “At the stroke of midnight”, the ethnographic state lives on?..............................45 2.2 Vicissitudes of the “tribe” in kerala studies........................................................................................53 2.2.1 The anthropological tribe in Kerala: A happy people without any history?.............................................................................................................................................56 2.2.2 The indigenist challenge to the ethnographic tribe...................................................63 2.3 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................................................67 Chapter 3: The importance of being adivasi............................................................................ 69 3.1 Becoming adivasi: To frame or to be framed ....................................................................................71 3.1.1 Adivasi mobilization in the shadow of the ST Land Act ..........................................72 3.1.2 Attempts at “autonomous” organizing.............................................................................77 CEU eTD Collection 3.1.3 From Kurichy to Kundalla: Visions of a Dalit-Adivasi Struggle...........................81 3.1.4 The Muthanga struggle: Within and against the “adivasi” frame.......................86 3.2 Travelling models, common-sense, and conscientization ..........................................................91 3.2.1 “Travelling models” of indigenism and their tensions.............................................91