History is replete with instances of communities remonstrating or individuals sacrificing their lives to assert their lawful and traditional rights over territories that have been forcibly colonised or usurped by dominant forces or militarily sophisticated regimes.
If some experience a sense of belonging to the space in question, there are others who are systematically excluded and marginalised, with their rights and privileges curtailed, and cultures demeaned. In their attempt to assimilate all in the mainstream, the states may calculatedly carry out programmes that are blatantly insensitive to the cultures of the minorities, migrants, and fringe populations.
Ethnographic landscapes
This book, aptly titled, discusses this theme in all its varied aspects, covering ethnographic landscapes in different parts of the world. An outcome of a workshop held in Delhi University in 2006, it contains nine articles, besides an introduction. Whether it is Sri Lanka or Canada, Denmark or Myanmar, the groups accumulate differential experiences of exclusion from or acceptance of the wider world.
Of significant value is a proper understanding of the migrant communities that may become the victims of the state's prejudices and partisan treatment. How would a group of people react, and how ‘cocooned' it would become, when its cultural practices are trampled upon and its identity is effaced, in the name of homogenisation or security concerns? The book attempts to answer these questions, providing a lead to the study of cross-cultural instances of “contested space.”
To highlight some of the striking contributions and examine the salient points made by the authors, Sasanka Perera looks at the monuments the Sri Lankan government erected in honour of the “war heroes”. Through these rituals of commemoration and glorification, he argues, the state endeavours to create an “authentic Sinhala” identity. Such valorisation of the “war heroes”, who are in fact seen as the “protectors of the Sinhala people and Buddhism,” necessarily marginalises the identities of the Tamils and Hindus.
In a study of squatter-families in Nepal and schools in Denmark, Karen Valentin shows that state prescription for good citizenship is conveyed through education. On the basis of her study of a Canadian school, Meenakshi Thapan, editor of this volume, concludes that “relations of power related to schooling go beyond the school itself.” It was Pierre Bourdieu who called the ‘body' a “memory pad.”
Deborah Reed-Danahay, discussing Vietnamese Americans in north-central Texas, says these refugees speak of their bodies in the context of their changing identities. Becoming American involves more than being a citizen or speaking English; it is also a matter of “embodied status” and “looking” like an American. These embodied experiences are also described in Valerie Raoul's paper on migrants to Quebec, who are transformed into French-speaking citizens through legislation and schooling.
The state may also sponsor the cultural performances of the minorities, but in this process, it may “co-opt” and “modernise” them, eventually leading to their absorption into the dominant culture. Roma Chatterji's piece on “folk art in West Bengal” deals with this role of the state, the outcome of which is that the folk art loses its “local” significance.
Gender is the cultural construction of sex. As in the case of other social parameters, its role changes over time; so do the images of desirable masculinity and femininity. Jani de Silva, in her paper on Sri Lanka, argues that the values of assertiveness, deference, accommodation, and playfulness are combined in men, with which they are able to combat the “internal aggression” built in a conflict-ridden situation.
Hiroko Kawanami makes the point that, by renouncing the world, the nuns in Myanmar are able to acquire a sense of autonomy and confidence, and in this way they have resisted the state oppression against women.
Afghan situation
Sunera Thobani analyses four films on the situation in Afghanistan made by Muslim women settled in the West. Although the purported objective of these films was to sensitise the Western audiences to the violence and terror the Afghans were experiencing as a consequence of Western intervention, they only perpetuated the West's construction of a “War against Terror”, in which Muslims constitute the “dangerous other”, and the Afghani women were “co-opted” as colluders.
The volume seeks to break the barriers between different disciplines. In particular, it brings psychology closer to other social sciences by using the concepts of “psychological well-being” and “emotional connections.” It will be an important source material for the study of tribal people, because the issue of contestations on spaces, territories, and resources is of serious concern to them.
