Abstract:
Contemporary cultural heritage movements in adivasi areas range from small scale ethnological exhibitions to dance performances, public showcases of rituals and language revival projects. In the wider context of ethnic, religious and national identities increasingly being represented as distinct and polarised cultural groups, cultural heritage and local anthropology have become important modes through which indigenous voices and political identities are audible and visible. This paper explores arts programming, language heritage work and other public self-representations of Adivasi culture articulated by Koya people in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India, especially at a bi-annual cultural festival in the market town of Chintoor, at the junction between four Indian states. These cultural programmes project highly localised linguistic and cultural traditions yet speak to global debates in on identity, representation, and decolonisation, as they mobilise essentialised constructions of particular indigenous cultures to invoke indigeneity at a global register. The paper argues that these events are part of wider trends towards cultural revivalism or “re-tribalisation” and considers whether these can be considered decolonising forms of salvage anthropology, as they re-appropriate and transcend state-ethnographic modes of classification and representation.
About the Speaker:
Thomas Herzmark is an anthropologist whose research interests are in political, economic, and legal anthropology, indigenous identification and recognition, and social change. He trained in anthropology at SOAS, University of London, the University of Hyderabad, and at the London School of Economics and has a long-standing regional specialisation on the ethnography of South Asia. More recently, Thomas has undertaken research on Higher Education, housing, and welfare policies in the UK, and is currently an affiliated researcher at Brunel University London. Building on his doctoral research, which focussed on the family dynamics of livelihood transition in an adivasi community in Andhra Pradesh, Thomas is currently preparing publications on affirmative action, the politics of recognition, cultural objectification, and processes of change and continuity in adivasi areas.