Soma Chaudhuri

Samir R. Das

Himadri S. Paul

Srikanta Tirthapura

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, ICDCN 2006, held in Guwahati, India in December 2006. Coverage in this volume includes ad hoc networks, distributed computing and algorithms, security, grid and P2P computing, performance evaluation, internetworking protocols and applications, optical networks and multimedia, sensor networks, and wireless networks.

8th International Conference, ICDCN 2006, Guwahati, India, December 27-30, 2006, Proceedings

Distributed Computing and Networking

Analysis of Contemporary Witch Hunts in the Tea Plantations of Bengal

Tempest in a Tea Pot

Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India: Tempest in Teapot is a unique book that brings together a holistic theoretical approach on the subject of witchcraft accusations, specifically those taking place inside a tea workers' community in India. Using a combination of in-depth and extensive qualitative methods, and drawing on sociological, anthropological, and historical perspectives, Chaudhuri explores how adivasi (tribal) migrant workers use witchcraft accusations to deal with worker-management conflict. Chaudhuri argues that witchcraft accusations can be interpreted as a periodic reaction of the adivasi worker community against their oppression by the plantation management. The typical avenues of social protest are often unavailable to marginalized workers due to lack of organizational and political representation and resources. As a result, the dain (witch) becomes a scapegoat for the malice of the plantation economy. Within this discourse, witch hunts can be seen not as exotic and primitive rituals of a backward community, but rather as a powerful protest by a community against its oppressors. The book attempts to understand the complex network of relationships—ties of friendship, family, politics, and gender—that provide the necessary legitimacy for the witch hunt to take place. In most cases examined here, seemingly petty conflicts within the villagers often escalate to a hunt. At the height of the conflict, the exploitative relationship between the plantation management and the adivasi migrant workers often gets hidden. The book demonstrates how witchcraft accusations should be interpreted within this backdrop of labor-planters relationship, characterized by rigidity of power, patronage, and social distance. Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India should appeal to criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, labor historians, gender scholars, labor migration scholars, witch hunt and witchcraft accusation global scholars, adivasi scholars, South Asian scholars, and anyone interested in India’s tribes, witchcraft accusations, gender in a global world, labor conflict, and Indian tea plantations.

Tempest in a Teapot

Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India

Soma Chaudhuri

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