Book by Alpa Shah
Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in 21st Century India
Ground Down by Growth, 2019
Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerrillas
Nightmarch, 2020
A first-hand account of India’s widespread Marx, Lenin and Mao-inspired Naxalite insurgency, and ... more A first-hand account of India’s widespread Marx, Lenin and Mao-inspired Naxalite insurgency, and the state’s brutal response.
Winner of the 2020 Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Book Prize. Shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize and for the 2019 New India Book Foundation Prize.
In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India
2010. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press. An Indian edition has been published in 2011 by Delhi... more 2010. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press. An Indian edition has been published in 2011 by Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Edited Works by Alpa Shah
Adivasi and Dalit political pathways in India
Focaal, 2016
Edited by Alpa Shah and Nicolas Jaoul. Focaal, 76: 3 -128.
Savage Attack: Adivasi Insurgency in India
2014. New Delhi: Social Science Press.
2013 (Edited with Stuart Corbridge). Special Issue of Economy and Society 42: (3).
2013 (Edited with Sara Shneiderman). Special Issue of Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical An... more 2013 (Edited with Sara Shneiderman). Special Issue of Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology Spring 2013. Vol 65.
2012 (Edited with Judith Pettigrew). New Delhi: Social Science Press.
2006 (Edited with Toby Kelly). Special Issue of Critique of Anthropology 26 (3).
Articles and Chapters by Alpa Shah
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2018
Neoliberal globalisation has resulted in the bypassing of agrarian transition-led industrialisati... more Neoliberal globalisation has resulted in the bypassing of agrarian transition-led industrialisation and classic proletarianisation, and class-for-itself class struggles are rare. Drawing on analyses of class relations, racism and other forms of social oppression, this contribution explores how processes of 'conjugated oppression' are central to the spread of contemporary capitalism. The focus is on India and on how the co-constitution of class relations and social oppression based on caste, tribe, gender and region is entrenching Dalits and Adivasis at the bottom of social and economic hierarchies. The analysis has deep-seated consequences for how we think about political struggles, in this case ones that foreground caste and tribe and focus on both labour and land.
British Journal of Sociology, 2021
Piketty's propositions for arresting inequality are discussed through the lens of racism/casteism... more Piketty's propositions for arresting inequality are discussed through the lens of racism/casteism. We focus on the case of India's George Floyds-the persistence of caste and tribe oppression under economic growth in India-through the insights of our long-term ethnographic research. We show that inequalities are intimately tied to dynamics of capitalist accumulation in which racial/ethnic/caste/tribe and gen
Development and Change, 2021
What if we selected our leaders by lottery? Zooming out from the mud huts of indigenous communiti... more What if we selected our leaders by lottery? Zooming out from the mud huts of indigenous communities in the forested hills of eastern India, this article compares three different models of leadership and democracy: liberal electoral democracy; Marxist-Leninist Maoist democracy; and democracy by sortition-the random selection of rotating leaders. The significance of sortition is introduced into discussions of democracy in India (showing connections with practices in Nepal and China) as part of a broader attempt to make scholarship on South Asia more democratic. The author also re-reads ideals of leadership among indigenous people, showing that we need a theoretical and practical vision arguing not for societies without leaders but for societies in which everyone may be a leader. In India, this compels us to push back against the critique of its indigenous communities for not producing leaders and enables a profound re-reading of the history of subaltern anti-colonial rebellions. The final aim of the article is to highlight the virtues of the potential of sortition in creating democratic society globally. How we think about democracy and leadership is thus turned on its head to provide a new vision for the future. This article is an expanded version of the lecture delivered at the Development Studies Association Conference, which was held online, 17-19 June 2020. The ideas it contains are also shared as the inaugural David Graeber Memorial Lecture delivered by the author in May 2021.
Social Anthropology, 2021
Across the globe, we are seeing a popular shift of appeal from a liberal-humanitarian imaginatio... more Across the globe, we are seeing a popular shift of appeal from a liberal-humanitarian imagination of the world, or even a communist-socialist ideal, to one that is more conservative and often called 'right-wing populist'. In the ethnographic context analysed here, a utopian movement for revolutionary social change, led by Marx-Lenin and Mao-inspired Naxalite guerrillas, that once had a wide appeal in parts of India, is superseded by a more conservative utopian imagination of Hindutva forces. In exploring the Indian Maoist case, I suggest that dystopia is embedded within utopia. If those engaged in utopian social transformation seek to challenge prevailing ideology to transform people's actions, it is equally possible for their utopian imagination to retreat into ritual that not only bears little relevance to most people but may also be potentially harmful and pave the way for other ideals to become prevalent. In analysing this Indian case, the paper suggests that we develop an anthropological theory of praxis, one that deals not only with how imaginations to change the world become realised in practice, but also accounts for multiple competing imaginations and how and why some become prevalent over others in daily life, in a dialectical process of reflection and action.
Transactions of Institute of British Geographers, 2020
This paper focuses on the processes of migrant labour exploitation which are crucial for capitali... more This paper focuses on the processes of migrant labour exploitation which are crucial for capitalist growth and the inequalities they generate. Ethnographic research conducted in different sites across India shows how patterns of seasonal labour migration are driven by class relations marked by hierarchies of identity (caste and tribe) and the spatial geopolitics of internal colonialism (region)differences
Modern Asian Studies: 1-55.
Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 2017
This essay focuses on the core of ethnographic research—participant observation—to argue that it ... more This essay focuses on the core of ethnographic research—participant observation—to argue that it is a potentially revolutionary praxis because it forces us to question our theoretical presuppositions about the world, produce knowledge that is new, was confined to the margins, or was silenced. It is argued that participant observation is not merely a method of anthropology but is a form of production of knowledge through being and action; it is praxis, the process by which theory is dialectically produced and realized in action. Four core aspects of participation observation are discussed as long duration (long-term engagement), revealing social relations of a group of people (understanding a group of people and their social processes), holism (studying all aspects of social life, marking its fundamental democracy), and the dialectical relationship between intimacy and estrangement (befriending strangers). Though the risks and limits of participant observation are outlined, as are the tensions between activism and anthropology, it is argued that engaging in participant observation is a profoundly political act, one that can enable us to challenge hegemonic conceptions of the world, challenge authority, and better act in the world. " That's enough about ethnography! " says Tim Ingold (2014). It was a provocation to those who value ethnography, but it seems to me that the substance of the debates that have ensued, in the Cultural Anthropology Forum and in this volume of Hau, shows more agreement than disagreement with what is special about the process of our fieldwork and writing. In this essay I seek to clarify why ethnographic research carried out by anthropologists is important beyond the confines of our own discipline, why how we do it has the potential to contribute new knowledge
Economic and Political Weekly, May 27, 2017
Based on long-term ethnographic fi eld research in the Adivasi-dominated forests of eastern India... more Based on long-term ethnographic fi eld research in the Adivasi-dominated forests of eastern India, this article explores how and why the Naxalites have persisted in the subcontinent and the challenges that beset revolutionary mobilisation. The focus is on how communist ideology for a casteless and classless society translated into the humaneness of revolutionary subjectivity, creating relations of intimacy between the guerrilla armies and the people in its strongholds. Crucially, also analysed are a series of contradictions that constantly undermine revolutionary mobilisation, tearing the Naxalites apart and destroying them from within.
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Book by Alpa Shah
Winner of the 2020 Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Book Prize. Shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize and for the 2019 New India Book Foundation Prize.
Edited Works by Alpa Shah
Articles and Chapters by Alpa Shah