SCALE, PLACE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE ALONG INDIA’S NARMADA RIVER
Resumo
This paper focuses on the struggles being waged by the Narmada
Bachao Andolan, a rural social movement opposing displacement due to
dams along India’s Narmada River. Building a comparison between two
major anti-dam struggles within the Andolan, around the Sardar Sarovar
and Maheshwar dams, this study seeks to show that multi-sited social
movements pursue a variety of scale and place-based strategies and this
multiplicity is key to the possibilities for progressive change that
they embody. The paper highlights three aspects of the Andolan. First,
the Andolan has successfully combined environmental networks and
agricultural identities across the space of its struggle. The Andolan
became internationally celebrated when its resistance led to the World
Bank withdrawing funding for the Sardar Sarovar dam in 1993. This
victory was viewed as a consequence of the Andolan’s successful
utilization of transnational environmental networks. However, the
Andolan has also intervened in agrarian politics within India and this
role of the Andolan emerges when the struggle against the Maheshwar dam
is considered. Second, this paper examines the role played by the
Andolan in building a national movement against displacement. Given that
India’s Supreme Court gave permission for the continued construction of
the Sardar Sarovar dam in 2000, the power of the state to push through
destructive development projects cannot be underestimated. The national
level thus remains an important scale for the Andolan’s struggle leading
to the formation of social movement networks and the construction of
collective identities around experiences of rural and urban
displacement. Third, this paper reflects on how common access to the
Narmada river also provides a material basis for the formation of a
collective identity, one which can be used to address the class
divisions that characterize the Andolan’s membership. Overall, the paper
aims to contribute to the study of social movements by showing how
attachments to multiple geographies ensure that a movement’s potential
futures always exceed the nature of its present forms of resistance.
Palavras-chave
Rural geography; social movements; agricultural livelihoods; environmentalism; displacement; India.
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Este trabalho está licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons - Atribuição 4.0 Internacional.
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