Description
This paper explores the relationship between resistance, social reproduction and resource frontiers, through ethnographic engagement in Chhattisgarh, central India. Over the last decade, the northern districts of Chhattisgarh—a state with one of the largest shares of India’s indigenous adivasi population—have been at the epicentre of expanding coal mining operations led by the country’s largest corporations. Advasi and agrarian social movements resisting large-scale deforestation, dispossession and pollution caused by mining projects, are increasingly prominent and politicised sites of contention in this region.
In this paper, I bring into conversation feminist conceptualisations of social reproduction in international political economy and theories of ecological violence articulated in political ecology, to explore how practices of everyday resistance are embedded in struggles for collective identity in anti-mining activism in Chhattisgarh. Using ethnographic interviews carried out four districts in Chhattisgarh between 2021-2024, I explore how popular Adivasi resistance slogan jal, jungle, zameen (“water, forest, and land”) acquires multiple meanings in relation to struggles, shaped at the intersection of gender and class. My analysis draws primarily on the everyday experiences of women activists and farmers across these districts. Ultimately, this paper contributes to feminist scholarship in environmental politics by examining the linkages between everyday resistance and social reproduction in contentious resource struggles.
