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CSLG organises a seminar by Nikita Sud
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CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE
Jawaharlal Nehru University
SEMINAR SERIES
NIKITA SUD
Associate Professor of Development Studies
University of Oxford
On
The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land
Abstract
Land is unfixed. Qualitative research in India shows humans physically reconfiguring, legally redefining, politically re-labeling and discursively reimagining land in growth and investment-led policies. The state is a key actor in the material and conceptual unfixing of land, and its re-fixing to emerging developmental imaginations. But land is not just a territorial container for the implementation of policy. Instead, it routinely stretches the boundaries of state authority. In my field sites, unfixed, multi-dimensional land emerges as contested access, social and political territory-making, possession that goes beyond the legality of property, and more. As unfixed land extends past the boundaries and authority of the state, the state too is stretched in projects of land’s unfixing and re-fixing. This state is revealed as porous, and with a criss-crossing of social relationships that draw out its institutional bounds into a world of moonlighting officials, revolving doors, and shadowy actors and transactions over unfixed land. The result of this co-productive interaction is the unfixed state of unfixed land.
3.00 PM, Thursday, 11 April 2019
Conference Room, CSLG, JNU
About the Speaker: Nikita Sud is Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford. She has a longstanding interest in the politics, governance and liberalisation of India's land. Her work on the subject has appeared in World Development, Development and Change, Journal of Peasant Studies, Environment and Planning, Geoforum, and Modern Asian Studies. Her book Unfixed Land: The Making of Land and The Making of India is forthcoming with OUP.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR TEA AFTER THE SEMINAR
ALL ARE WELCOME
Ghazala Jamil,
Coordinator, CSLG Seminar Series