Seminar description:

Presenting different relocation projects in the Maikal Hills beginning with relocation for agriculture or forestry mainly during colonial time, and later for big dam projects, natural resource exploitation and National Parks, it will be seen that different imaginations are getting in contradiction. On the one hand, processes of improving and thereby civilizing nature as well as people. On the other, Baiga concepts of nature, fertility and illness related to the earth goddess and the soil. How are these processes justified? How are the processes related to different notions of ‘development’ and ‘primitivity’ ascribed to Baigas? What influence do utilitarian imaginations related to ‘improvement’ and ‘development’ have?

Contact: Niels Brimnes, Research Programme Director