I'm afraid I haven't yet had time to read all the postings about Orissa
on the forum so I apologise if I am covering ground that has already
been discussed.
I have just completed and evaluation of UN development
interventions in tribal India and Orissa was one of the key areas of
this research. I was struck by the limited mention that I have picked
up from the media of the socio-cultural makeup of the people of
Orissa and the political context of the State. It is important because
it is relevant to the kind of State and national response so far to the
crisis.
A large proportion of the inhabitants of Orissa are tribal Indians
which means that they fall into one of the poorest and most
marginalised groups on the subcontinent. They are ethnically and
culturally different and speak distinctive tribal languages. The State
political system (as with many other places) exhibits signs of
parochialism, clientelism, and familiarism, and the caste, class and
gender issues combine as the mechanisms which define the
system of elite (non-tribal) exploitation of the tribal people.
II think Simon's mention of the work on the articulations of
caste, migrant labour and state corporations in central India is very
helpful. The Orissa case points up the need to understand the
particular characteristics of the socio-cultural and economic system
as a whole as we attempt to understand the reasons behind the
current crisis response in the State.
Undoubtedly the absent media coverage is a particularly damning
reflection on western priorities, but sadly there is nothing new about
this and we can all find countless examples of this kind of thing. I
find absent coverage of events in Latin America and in India to be
particularly aggravating.
Sarah
Dr Sarah Batterbury
Tavistock Institute
Evaluation, Development and Review Unit
30 Tabernacle St
EC2A 4UE
0171-417-0407
> These debates occur more readily outside the discipline.
> For example, the new book below looks promising.
>
> I am finding teaching about development and peripheral regions to be quite
> liberating OUTSIDE geography. Sitting in on other peoples' lectures at the
> LSE, it is evident that in a 20 week course on development theory, there is
> virtually no geographer on the reading list. In particular , the work of
> Wallerstein, who has some discussion of space and peripheries in his work,
> is generally considered to be passe' and unhelpful - a theoretical dead end.
> Harvey, Smith, MAssey et al are not featured.
>
> Although this state of affairs might feed into Massey's early critique that
> the spatial dynamics of capital are poorly theorized and understood in the
> social sciences more widely (or ignored), I makes me think that it more
> helpful to turn the question around - what can geographers learn from the
> masses of literature on peripheral capitalism that does NOT fit our standard
> disciplinary models of modernisation/globalisation/deindustrialisation?
> There is plenty of it; eg Jonathan Parry's work on the articulations of
> caste, migrant labour and state corporations in central India.
>
> Parry_JP Lords of labour: working and shirking in Bhilai. Contributions to
> Indian sociology, Jan-Aug 1999, Vol.33, No.1-2, pp.107-140
>
>
>
> Dr Simon Batterbury
> Lecturer, Development Studies Institute (DESTIN)
> LSE, Houghton St
> London WC2A 2AE, UK
> fax (44 0) 20-7955-6844
> telephone (+44 0)20-7955-7771 (direct) 7425 (general office)
> Web pages: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/geo/simon.html
>
>
> TITLE: The Subsistence Perspective - Beyond the Globalised Economy
>
> AUTHORS: Maria Mies & Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen
>
> ISBN/PRICE: 1 85649 775 5 hbk GBP45.00/US$65.00
> 1 85649 776 3 pbk GBP15.95/US$25.00
>
> FEATURES: Notes/Bibliography/Table/Index/256 pp
>
> COURSE RELEVANCE: Economics/Women's Studies/Development/Social Theory
> KEY POINTS
>
> - A compelling alternative to the top-down ideology of development
> politics
>
> - A radical and wide-ranging feminist perspective on the
> globalisation debate
>
>
> ABOUT THE BOOK
>
> In this book, two leading feminist thinkers pose a radical
> alternative to the current free-market industrial system.
> hey show how, if we are to survive, economies must
> become needs-based, environmentally sustainable,
> co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist
> system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and
> is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalized groups,
> particularly women, and of the environment. They call instead for a
> new politics and economics based on subsistence and, drawing on
> practical examples from Africa, Latin America and Europe, show how
> this principle can and does have a positive effect on market
> exchange.
>
> The book brilliantly demonstrates how development only works when it
> is done from the bottom up and concludes with a call for a new
> politics based on the view from below.
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Raju Das [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: 10 November 1999 16:43
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: parochialism of radical political economy in geography
> >
> > I must say that radical political economy has been very much
> > 'capital-centric' in the sense that it almost always neglects that
> > there is a world outside the orbit of capitalist _production_
> > relations (it is also capital-centric in the sense Herod has been
> > discussing for years now -- that it has ignored class struggle and
> > its role in the production of geographies). Think of the vast
> > peasantry and the semi-proletarians in Africa, South Asia etc.
> > The exchange-oriented view of capital is amenable to spatial
> > treatment and hence geographers have fallen for dependency type
> > formulations. But I have not seen many interesting geographical works
> > on non/pre-capitalism in the periphery as it exists now: the
> > articulation of modes of production (Rey, Wolpe etc), on peripheral
> > capitalism (Hamza Alavi, Banaji), and so on. If you know of any
> > geographical work (does not have to be by geographers), please let me
> > know. (Rey, Wolpe etc
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|