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Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India
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.
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.
204 pages, Hardcover
Published April 15, 2019
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December 28, 2025
Fantastic book! Nicely captures the complexity of the Assam-Nagaland border, the conflict between local authorities, villages, military and its relationship with the Indian State. The structure of the chapters and their set up is quite helpful. The discussion moves - in between coal, oil, food, love, violence, electoral politics, government, environment - and gives a deep, insightful context to understanding the region. I feel like there were moments where carbon extraction and its implications on the bodies of people was amplified by caste. For instance, the State's profiling of Marwaris and their free movements between borders as opposed to racial profiling of Assamese, pointed an obvious play of caste capital. But the author misses these connections. Overall, well written book! I wasn't bored at all, hehe.
Displaying 1 of 1 review