Abstract
This chapter starts with an anecdote from the field to introduce the puzzle of people’s agency in times of conflict. It tells about how conducting fieldwork in rural villages in West Bengal challenged views on ‘why men rebel’, and opened to the broader question of what local people do to face and respond to a situation of violent conflict and structural violence. The chapter provides an overview of existing research in the field, focusing on how people’s agency has been discussed in the civil wars literature. This is followed by a background of the Lalgarh movement in Junglemahal, which is the case study for the monograph, and introduces the theoretical and methodological approach.
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Notes
- 1.
Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
- 2.
Roger Mac Ginty and Andrew Williams, Conflict and Development (London and New York: Routledge, 2009); Nils B. Weidmann, “Micro-Level Studies,” in Routledge Handbook of Civil Wars, ed. Edward Newman and Karl DeRouen (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2014).
- 3.
Roger Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace: Bottom-Up and Local Agency in Conflict-Affected Societies,” Security Dialogue 45, no. 6 (2014).
- 4.
Mac Ginty and Williams, Conflict and Development, 72.
- 5.
See, for example: Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008); Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Wanton and Senseless?,” Rationality and Society 11, no. 3 (1999).
- 6.
N. Kalyvas Stathis, “Micro-Level Studies of Violence in Civil War: Refining and Extending the Control-Collaboration Model,” Terrorism & Political Violence 24, no. 4 (2012); Kalyvas, “Wanton and Senseless?”
- 7.
Patricia Justino, “Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective on the Causes and Duration of Warfare,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 3 (2009).
- 8.
Ana Arjona, “Wartime Institutions,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 8 (2014).
- 9.
See, for example: Shane Barter, Civilian Strategy in Civil War: Insights from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines (Springer, 2016); David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
- 10.
Mary B. Anderson and Marshall Wallace, Opting Out of War: Strategies to Prevent Violent Conflict (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013); Juan Masullo J., The Power of Staying Put. Nonviolent Resistance Against Armed Groups in Colombia (Washington: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, 2015); Oliver Ross Kaplan, Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
- 11.
Rosie McGee, “Invisible Power and Visible Everyday Resistance in the Violent Colombian Pacific,” Peacebuilding 5, no. 2 (2017); Helen Berents, “An Embodied Everyday Peace in the Midst of Violence,” Peacebuilding (2015); Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace: Bottom-Up and Local Agency in Conflict-Affected Societies.”
- 12.
Christine Sylvester, War as Experience: Contributions from International Relations and Feminist Analysis (Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2013).
- 13.
Sanhati, “Lalgarh Movement—Mass Uprising of Adivasis in West Bengal,” Sanhati.
- 14.
Amit Bhattacharyya, Singur to Lalgarh via Nandigram, ed. Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (Ranchi, 2009).
- 15.
CPI (Maoist), “Our Aim is to Break CPM Shackles. Interview Given by the Zonal Committee Secretary of Communist Party of India (Maoist) for West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia Districts, Comrade Bikash to The Hindustan Times,” in www.bannedthought.net (2009). Partho Sarathi Ray to, 2010.
- 16.
Amit Bhattacharyya, Singur to Lalgarh via Nandigram—Update 1 (Ranchi: Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolon, 2009).
- 17.
Biswajit Roy, ed., War & Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists (Kolkata: Setu Prakashani, 2012).
- 18.
CPI (Maoist), “Party Programme” (2004); ibid.
- 19.
Jonathan Kennedy, “The Socioeconomic Determinants of Natural Resource Conflict: Minerals and Maoist Insurgency in India,” Society & Natural Resources 28, no. 2 (2015).
- 20.
See articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution of India. The lists of ST are available in the Constitution of India (Scheduled Tribes) Orders: Government of India, “Constitution of India,” ed. Ministry of Law and Justice.
- 21.
See, for example: B. Chakrabarty and R.K. Kujur, Maoism in India: Reincarnation of Ultra-Left Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2010); Kristian Hoelscher, Jason Miklian, and Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati, “Hearts and Mines: A District-Level Analysis of the Maoist Conflict in India,” International Area Studies Review 15, no. 2 (2012); Maitreesh Ghatak and Oliver Vanden Eynde, “Economic Determinants of the Maoist Conflict in India,” Economic & Political Weekly 52.39, no. 69 (2017).
- 22.
Manmohan Singh, “PM’s Speech at the Chief Minister’s Meet on Naxalism” (2006).
- 23.
CPI (Maoist), “Party Programme.”
- 24.
See Journal of Resistance Studies 1, no. 2 (2015).
- 25.
The population data was taken from the Census of India 2011 available online at http://www.census2011.co.in/. In 2017, the district of West Midnapore was divided and Jhargram has become a separate district.
- 26.
M. Patterson and K.R. Monroe, “Narrative in Political Science,” Annual Review of Political Science 1, no. 1 (1998).
- 27.
Daniel Bar-Tal, “Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflicts,” American Behavioral Scientist 50, no. 11 (2007).
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Carrer, M. (2022). A Puzzle from the Field. In: How People Respond to Violence. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11342-0_1
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