Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Alpa Shah BA, MSc, PHD

Alpa Shah is a social anthropologist interested in inequality and efforts to address it. She has drawn on more than a decade of field research in India to explore how marginalised people experience indigenous rights activism and Adivasi politics; poverty, the developmental state and corruption; seasonal casual labour migration and transformations in the agrarian economy; the state, education and positive action policies; and the radical left and emancipatory politics, notably the Maoist movement. She is the author of In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010 (an Indian edition has been published by New Delhi: Oxford University Press). She read Geography at Cambridge University and trained in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. She is a Research Associate with the Contemporary South Asia Programme at Oxford University.

Teaching

Dr Alpa Shah convenes the MA Development and Rights programme.

She teaches on the following courses:

• Critical Voices in Development / Anthropology of Development
• Anthropology of Development Placement
• Ethnography of South Asia

Areas of supervision

Alpa Shah is interested in supervising research students working on South Asia or the broader themes of indigenous and environmental movements; international development; agrarian transformation and the informal economy, violence and the state; and radical politics, in any part of the world.

Research interests

Dr Shah’s first book, In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010) suggests that well-meaning indigenous rights and development activism may misrepresent and unintentionally further marginalise the very people they intend to help. Her critique is based on extensive long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India, which separated from Bihar in 2000. Weaving through intimate ethnographic vignettes, exploring broader theoretical debates, and addressing local, regional and global concerns, each chapter develops and substantiates this core argument through a different theme – poverty alleviation projects, regeneration of indigenous sovereign structures, environmental protection, labour migration policies and insurgency. Through this exploration Shah seeks to bring a class analysis to a culture based politics.

Her current writing is on a number of themes. The first is the Maoist movement which has gripped the public imagination in India and Nepal. Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal (edited with Judith Pettigrew, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2011) explores the intimacies of everyday life amidst the spread of the revolutions, offering a series of windows into different stages of mobilisation and transformation into what are, were, or may become revolutionary strongholds. What emerges is a series of, sometimes counterintuitive, insights into the appeal of the Maoists, the reasons for the expansion of the revolutions, fear and its relationship to violence, and into the tragic consequences of brutal counterinsurgency programmes that have been used in both countries. Shah is currently working on a book-length manuscript and has made a 30 minute documentary with BBC Radio 4, ‘India’s Red Belt’ for the Crossing Continents series as well as reported for Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent on the guerilla insurgency.

A second theme of current interest is Inequality and Affirmative Action Policies. Shah is leading an inter-disciplinary collaboration with academics in the UK, India and Nepal to analyse debates on affirmative action in India and consider the implications for nascent policy making in Nepal. Shah’s writings on this issue, with Rob Higham, have focused on inequality and the effects of education and positive action policies for marginalized Adivasi populations in India. Shah’s research has been generously funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation and the British Academy.

Selected publications

Monograph

2010. In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press.

Edited Collections    

2011/09. Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal. New Delhi: Social Science Press. Also published as a special double issue of Dialectical Anthropology 33(3/4) 2009. (Edited with J Pettigrew)

2006. A Double Edged Sword: Protection and State Violence. Special Issue of Critique of Anthropology. 26 (3): 251-257. (Edited with T. Kelly)

Selected Journal Articles

2012. Cooperation. Terrain: Revue d’ethnologie de l’Europe. (Translated into French). Forthcoming.

2011. Alcoholics Anonymous: the Maoist Movement in Jharkhand, India. Modern Asian Studies. 45(5): 1095-1117.

2009 In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India. Dialectical Anthropology 33 (3/4): 271-286.

2009. Windows Into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in South Asia (with Judith Pettigrew). Dialectical Anthropology 33 (3/4): 225-251.

2009. Morality, Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand, Eastern India. Journal of Development Studies 45 (3): 295-313.

2007. The Dark Side of Indigeneity: Indigenous People, Indigenous Rights and Indigenous Development in India. History Compass 5/6: 1806-1832.

2007. Keeping the State Away: Democracy, Politics and Imaginations of the State in India’s Jharkhand. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (1): 129-145.

2006. The Labour of Love: Seasonal Migration from Jharkhand to the Brick Kilns of Other States in India. Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s) 40 (1): 91-119.

2006. Markets of Protection: The Maoist Communist Centre and the State in Jharkhand, India. Critique of Anthropology 26 (3): 297-314.

2006. A Double-edged Sword: Protection and State Violence (with Tobias Kelly). Critique of Anthropology 26(3): 251-259.

Selected Book Chapters

2011. India Burning: the Maoist Movement. In Clark-Deces, I. (ed). A Companion to the Anthropology of India. Basil-Blackwell.

2011. The Idea of Jharkhand: Who Cares About a Jharkhand State? In Rycroft, D. and S. Dasgupta (ed). Becoming Adivasi: Indigenous Pasts and the Politics of Belonging. Delhi: Routledge.

2009. Corruption: Insights Into Combating Corruption in Rural Development. In Sykes, K. (ed). Ethnographies of Moral Reasoning: Living Paradoxes of a Global Age. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Film/Media/Journalism

2010. India’s Red Belt, a BBC Radio 4 ‘Crossing Continents Series’ 30 minute radio documentary broadcast on 6.5.2010 and on BBC World Service ‘Assignments Series’ on 27.5.2010.

2010. BBC Radio 4  ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ broadcast of 1.5.2010 and on BBC World Service on 30.4.2010.

2010. Annihilation is the Last Choice. Economic and Political Weekly. 8 May. Vol XLV. No 19: 24-29. Interview with Gopalji, Spokesperson of the Special Area Committee of CPI(Maoist). An longer version was published by Monthly Review Magazine on 13 May 2010.

2008. Would Yosemite be a Better Home for the Wild Elephants of Eastern India? A 40 minute radio lecture – Resonance 104.4 FM. 22.8.08.

2002. Heads and Tales. Direction with Ajay T.G. A 22 min Jandarshan documentary film in English and Hindi on tradition and politics in Jharkhand.