Costelloe-KuehnMemo28

MEMO28: Describing Places, to Make an Analytic Point
This memo should include a 200-400-word description of a place that you have or may encounter, during your research, leveraging the description for analytic insight. In other words: make the description speak to a social theoretical question or point. The place you describe should be a real place, but you can flesh out your description imaginatively if you don’t yet have actual data.

from jatantrust.org: Madhya Pradesh has a rich history of forest-related social movements. Many movements started in colonial times as a response to the colonial forest policies of reservation and disregard for traditional rights of the local communities. In fact, colonial India’s first forest sanctuary was formed here in Bori in 1867, after evicting the local tribal chief and his supporting villages. After independence, these movements re-emerged in many areas focusing on local communities’ rights over three critical natural resources, viz., water, forests and land (jal, jungle aur zameen). The Satpura region is a place where sharp economic and social disparity exists under a calm surface. Combine harvesters in the fields maintain a society that remains largely feudal and agricultural, caste and community matter not only ritually, but also in areas from the marketplace to electoral politics. Across this region, farmers, adivasis (tribals) displaced from their ancestral villages, agricultural and working poor, women and youth have come together to redress their grievances. The twin theme of Sangarsh aur Nirman (to struggle and to create) has been the inspiration behind many lasting activities—be it the long struggle to be allowed to co-operatively fish in the waters of the Tawa Dam by many thousands of displaced adivasis; or landless labourers and small farmers of a village deciding to transform degraded unused land into a jungle capable of meeting their fodder and fuel wood needs.

Troy? Probably not a continuing site for dissertation research, but useful analytic exercise to describe a place that is so familiar?

Sarai Community Media Center? Never been there myself.. see descriptions by Geert Lovink

JATAN Trust main clubhouse? Participated in workshop/project in summer 2008. but better to describe as practice? event?