Narrating Nomadism provides an unflinching account of ethnic groups and nomadic communities across the world that were branded as ‘criminal’ during colonial times. It explores the tragic effect of the new identity imposed on them, the traumatic survival of these communities and cultures, and the creative expression of this experience in their arts and literature in the form of resistance. Presenting specific contexts and locations of cultural devastation in history, the volume traces colonial social imagination as such, showing how the grossly misperceived non-sedentary communities in the colonies were subjected to the mission of ‘settling’ them. The essays presented here document these alternative histories from perspectives ranging from literary criticism and art history to ethnography and socio-linguistics, highlighting in what ways different nomadic communities negotiate discrimination and challenge in contemporary times, while finding remarkable convergence in their local histories and collective testimonies. This anthology opens up a new area in postcolonial studies as well as cultural anthropology by bringing the viewpoint of marginalized communities and their cultural rights to bear upon history, society and culture. It places an activist’s ‘view from below’ at the centre of literary interpretation, engages with oral history more substantially than folklore studies usually do, and brings together several historical narratives hitherto unexplored. This will be essential for students of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history, linguistics, post-colonial studies, literature and tribal studies, as well as the general reader.

This book argues that integrating artistic contributions – with an emphasis on culture and language – can make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects more accessible, and therefore promote creativity and innovation in teaching and learning at all levels of education. It provides tools and strategies for managing interdisciplinary learning and teaching based on successful collaborations between researchers, practitioners and artists in the fields of the Arts and STEM subjects. Based on contributions by educators, scientists, scholars, linguists and artists from around the globe, the book highlights how we can demonstrate teamwork and collaboration for innovation and creativity in STEAM subjects in the classroom and beyond. The book reflects the core of human rights education, using local languages and local knowledge through art as a tool for teaching human rights at school, and bringing to light questions on diversity, ecology, climate change, environmental issues, health and the future of human beings, as well as power relations between non-dominant (minorities) and dominant (the majority) groups in society.

This collection addresses broad questions of ethics and aesthetics in the framework of vernacular cosmopolitanism. With a common anthropological focus, the essays map literary and artistic practices involving cross-cultural transactions shaped by social forces, institutions, and the multiple mediations of the imagination. Some essays are based on community-based fieldwork, while all encompass an affective immersion in the places we inhabit, and the claims these make on the body’s intelligibility. The authors consider the role of artists, writers, and literary scholars as cultural actors in a variety of settings, grassroots, regional, trans-regional, and global. Topics include: the role of social and cultural activism; the problematic dimensions of national belonging; the plurality of knowledge-systems and inter-language environ-mental learning in South Africa; the vernacular imagination in Papua New Guinea Anglophone fiction; pulp fiction and chick lit in India; transformative artistic motifs of Australia’s nomadic Tiwi community; life writing as a reconfiguring of postcolonial or cosmopolitan paradigms; southern African supernatural belief-systems and the malign magic of the global economy; Canadian First Nations literature read against the struggle for self-determination by India’s castes and scheduled tribes; feral animals in relation to the indigenous exotic; and the imbrication of the vernacular, national, colonial, and cosmopolitan in perceptions of homecoming in the eastern Mediterranean. The collection as a whole thus provides manifestations of poesis in relation to theory and praxis and articulates perspectives that expand, challenge, strengthen, and renew the potential for growth in contemporary world literature and culture.

This book sheds light on the status of tribal communities in Central India with respect to governance, human development, gender, health, education, arts, and culture. Written by noted academics, thematic experts, and activists, this first-of-its-kind report by the Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation brings together case studies, archival research, and exhaustive data on key facets of the lives of Adivasis, the various programmes meant for their development, and the policy and systems challenges, to build a better understanding of the Adivasi predicament. This volume, Discusses the human development challenges faced by the Adivasis in India, covering the dismal state of health, education, and nutrition in Adivasi regions; Explores key issues related to gender and development in an Adivasi context, the impact of the loss of common lands and forests on their traditional economic roles; Presents the progress made thus far in implementing PESA and FRA; Examines the current state of 'Denotified Tribes' in India, the policy response of the state post-independence, and the abrogation of the act, and discusses the immediate need for recognition of their political rights; Highlights the importance of recognising, developing, and preserving Adivasi arts, music, dance, crafts, language and literature, and knowledge systems. Companion to Tribal Development Report: Livelihoods, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of indigenous studies, development studies, and South Asian studies.

Based on intensive ethnographic work in Romania and India conducted over six years, this book traces the struggle for social justice in Roma and Adivasi communities. Throughout centuries of persecution and marginalization, the Roma and Adivasi have been viewed as both victims and fighters, as royals and paupers, beasts and gods, and lately have been challenging the political and social order by defying the status quo. Different from commonly held suppositions that assume most marginalized and mobile communities typically resist the state and engage in hostile acts to undermine its authority, Power on the Move shows how these groups are willing to become full members. By utilizing different means, such as protests, sit-ins and grass roots organizing, they aim to gain the attention of the state (national and international), hoping to reach inclusion and access social justice.

Performing Identities brings together essays by scholars, artists and activists engaged in understanding and conserving rapidly disappearing local knowledge forms of indigenous communities across continents. It depicts the imaginative transactions evident in the interface of identity and cultural transformation, raising the issue of cultural rights of these otherwise marginalized communities.

In Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas, author Christopher Ian Foster analyzes increasingly urgent questions regarding crises of global immigration by redefining migration in terms of conscription and by studying contemporary literature. Reporting on immigration, whether liberal or conservative, popular or scholarly, leaves out the history in which the Global North helped create outward migration in the Global South. From histories of racial capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and imperialism to contemporary neoliberal globalization and the resurgence of xenophobic nationalism, countries in the Global North continue to devastate and destabilize the Global South. Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, in different ways, police the effects of their own global policies at their borders. Foster provides a substantial study of a new body of contemporary African diasporic literature called migritude literature. Migritude indicates the work and ideas of a disparate yet distinct group of younger African authors born after independence in the 1960s. Most often migritude authors have lived both in and outside Africa and narrate the experiences of migration under the pressures of globalization. They also emphasize that immigration itself and stereotypes of the immigrant are entangled with the history of colonialism. Authors like Fatou Diome, Shailja Patel, Abdourahman Waberi, Cristina Ali Farah, and others confront critical issues of migrancy, diaspora, departure, return, racism, identity, gender, sexuality, and postcoloniality.