Chapter 1 Introduction

This volume draws its inspiration from perspectives that have developed over the last few decades in media anthropology. These include seminal works such as Bourdieu’s (1993 ) analysis of cultural production, Larkin’s (2008 ) study of the impact of media technologies on cultural form and Ginsburg’s (1995a , 2002 ) work on indigenous media. Methodologically, the volume relies heavily on ethnography; each of the contributions is grounded in qualitative research. Most of the chapters are based upon data that their authors collected while doing long-term research. Typically, such research involves building up lasting relationships with one’s interlocutors, learning about their ideas, attitudes and practices by accompanying them in everyday life. Taken together, the various contributions explore how media that is made for audiences deemed indigenous is produced, shared, and viewed or ‘consumed’. The chapters explore the social and political impact of old and new media technologies and media content in relation to the (re)formulation, contestation and (re)defi nition of mediatised representations of indigeneity, and how this bears upon perceptions and conceptualisations of nation in South Asia

Negotiations at death: Assessing gifts, mothers, and marriages

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From Marginal Zone to Borderland? Ethnographies, Histories and Politics in North East India

The international borders surrounding North East India that have emerged in the wake of South Asia’s arbitrary partition have not only shaped the region politically, but also culturally and historically. This reflects in the production of social scientific knowledge, which so far continues to approach the region as a marginal zone, and insufficiently acknowledges it as a part of a transnational borderland. In North East India, ethnographic knowledge is of particular importance. In the absence of pre-colonial archives, notably for the upland areas, ethnographies are appreciated as valuable sources. Ethnographies are built on observations and oral accounts that derive from research among actual people, solidifying culture, and—over time—constituting history. Considering that the meta-narratives encompassed by ethnographies are (eventually) absorbed in political discourses and administrative policies, what is the bearing of such academic accounts on the people these texts refer to? The value of ethnographies as sources can hardly be underestimated, but a rethinking of the sociological categories that they induce or implicitly support is both challenging and required. Going by my own long time engagement with the Garo of Northeast India, I discuss the impact of ethnographic imaginations on the people they refer to. I use these insights to explore how analytical frameworks that approach North East India as a borderland, and take the making and unmaking of political borders into account, can contribute to the development of new perspectives on society, history and state.W07.04.030.249Global Challenges (FSW

Garo: The Garo Ethnic Community

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Improviseerimisoskuse arendamiseks kasutatavad meetodid Eesti kesk- ­ja kõrgema astme muusikakoolide rütmimuusika kitarriõppes

Minu lõputöö uurib kitarriõppe valdkonda rütmimuusika erialal Eesti kesk- ja kõrgastme muusikakoolides. Nendeks koolideks on G. Otsa nimeline Tallinna Muusikakool, H. Elleri nimeline Tartu Muusikakool, Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia ning Tartu Ülikooli Viljandi Kultuuriakadeemia (TÜ VKA). Antud teemat ajendas mind uurima kolmeaastane töökogemus TÜ VKA-s, kus õpetades olen hakanud otsima ja katsetama meetodeid, mis aitaksid tudengitel luua tugevat baasi kitarril improviseerimisel ja oma helikeele leidmisel, seda eriti jazzmuusika stiilis.http://www.ester.ee/record=b5142914*es

Performing the Garo nation? Garo Wangala dancing between faith and folklore.

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Reworking culture: relatedness, rites, and resources in Garo Hills, North East India

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted assumption that upland societies are unchanging, characterized by cultural homogeneity and strong internal cohesion. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the book focuses on a rural area where a substantial number of people practice the traditional Garo community religion. The book does not aim to document and idealize relics of cultural practices destined for extinction in the face of greater forces such as globalization. Yet it does ask why people continue to be committed to practices that are considered obsolete elsewhere in the same region, given that over the last century and a half the vast majority of the Garo have abandoned the community religion in favour of Christianity. The book explores the creation and continuing reinterpretation of the multiple relationships through which people are connected to one another, as well as to their environment. Far from being immutable, these relationships need to be constantly expressed, enacted, and (re-)interpreted. Reworking Culture shows how what people perceive as tradition, is continuously revised and reworked in response to new economic and political opportunities, as well as to changes in the ontological landscape.NWOGlobal Challenges (FSW

Who owns the hills? Ownership, inequality, and communal sharing in the borderlands of India

Across the uplands of Northeast India, sedentary forms of agriculture are gradually replacing shifting cultivation. In the process, land holdings are becoming “privatized.” As commonly held land becomes inaccessible or dis- appears, and mechanisms that formerly called for the redistribution of wealth transform, social inequality increases. The location of the Garo Hills at the border with Bangladesh renders the area a peripheral borderland, in which the Indian state exerts its presence. In his historical analysis of upland societies of the Zomia massif, James Scott (2009) emphasizes how the modern state strives to control and “make taxable” all of its subjects. For Tania Murray Li (2014), the development of neoliberal markets is the primary driver of change, as she shows based on long-term research in rural Central Sulawesi (Indone- sia). While the effects of both these transformative forces can be clearly felt, in the Garo Hills the ongoing dissolution of communally managed land and the creation of privately owned plots is nonetheless held in check by the persistent social obligation to maintain at least a certain degree of communal sharing. This article is a contribution to a special issue on ‘Agrarian Change in Zomia’, guest-edited by Erik de Maaker and Deborah E. Tooker.W07.04.030.249Global Challenges (FSW

Rethinking ethnographies on Garo Hills

This chapter of the Handbook of Highland Asia analyses how ethnographic knowledge production relating to a geographic area that in the course of the expansion of the colonial state became known as Garo Hills, resulted in the emergence of racialized colonial ethnography in the identification of the Garo ethnic community. Garo Hills received its boundaries as much from it initially being evaded from colonial conquest, as well as by its later inclusion as an exclusionary area. The borders drawn in the early colonial era, have continued to shape ethnographic knowledge production, not in the least since these have also gained significant political clout. As ethnicities are increasingly turning into political communities, these increasingly shape the lives of the people who ethnographers are studying. This holds for ethnographers coming from outside, but presents itself as a reality equally to growing number of ethnographers deriving from the region itself.Global Challenges (FSW