Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan (Eds.). 2019. Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession: Indigenous, Peasant and Urban Poor Activisms in the Americas and Asia.
| Author | Sehar Iqbal |
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020962714 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
392 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(3)
example. In those areas too, a culture of generalism and a lack of expertise renders
policymaking and implementation less successful than it could and should be.
Another question concerns the consequences of greater political interest in
national security, which we have certainly seen under Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) led government. Mukherjee touches briefly on the possibility
of the politicisation of the armed forces, in the light of the May 2019 general
election, in which Modi’s credentials as a strongman and defender of the nation
were emphasised in electioneering and highlighted by air strikes and missile tests.
But there are arguably longer-running trends, not least the trickle of retired
generals, such as V. K. Singh, into the BJP, and the creeping politicisation of the
civil service, which may lead to a transformation of civil–military relations even
without institutional reforms, though not perhaps to a more effective military.
ORCID iD
Ian Hall https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0397-2011
Ian Hall
Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
E-mail: i.hall@griffith.edu.au
Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan (Eds.). 2019. Research, Political
Engagement and Dispossession: Indigenous, Peasant and Urban
Poor Activisms in the Americas and Asia. Zed Books. 269 pp. ISBN:
978-1-78699440-0.
DOI: 10.1177/2347797020962714
Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession brings together 15 contributors
from a variety of backgrounds to examine indigenous, peasant, urban poor and
labour activism across North America, South America and Asia. Part one of the
book focuses on indigenous and peasant activism while part two deals with urban
poor activisms across the Americas and Asia.
By the editors’ admission, this book, featuring as it does academic research on
behalf of movements of dispossessed communities in Asia and the Americas falls
into the academically contentious category of activist research that has been
criticised by some academics for not being objective or rigorous enough (see
Hale, 2008). However, Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession
transcends these criticisms by the sheer depth of its research. Though researchers
employ ethnographic research methods their studies represent the communities in
all their complexity and not as a romanticised simplification; a common pitfall of
ethnographic study. The best illustration of this is David Meek’s chapter on oral
histories of the landless workers’ movement in Brazil that uses interviews with an
activist over seven years to present an intersectional view of education, land
To continue reading
Request your trial