Spaces of Opportunity: State-Oustee Relations in the Context of Conservation-Induced Displacement in Central India

This article draws from detailed fieldwork on the recent conservationinduced displacement of a Maharashtrian village in central India to contest the simplicity of conventional treatments of such displacement as a straightforward enactment of state power. Reflecting certain broader theories of power, agency and the state, the case of Botezari village presents a more nuanced reality in which state-society relations were transformed and retransformed. In the village’s pre-relocation phase, a set of conducive factors came together to create a small opening which enabled a fundamental reworking of familiar state-oustee power relationships. This opening was ultimately short-lived, with spaces of oustee opportunity to direct change largely closed off in the post-relocation context. However, the villagers’ memories of their pre-relocation liberating moment, and the strategic capacity, confidence and expectations honed in that moment, persisted to an extent that challenges the permanency and inevitability of displacementinduced marginalization in the conservation setting.

機會空間：印度中部保護引起的被迫遷徙中的國家－被驅逐者關係

基於對最近印度中部馬哈拉施特拉邦的一個村子的保護引起的被迫遷徙所進行的詳細田野調查，本文主張那種將被迫遷徙看作是國家權力的直接展現的通常見解流於簡單化。波特扎日村的實例應證了某些關於權力、能動性和國家的理論，展示出一種更微妙的現實，即國家－社會間的關係經歷了轉變和再轉變。在該村的遷移前時期，一系列的有利因素共同製造了一個對舊有國家－被驅逐者之間的權力關係進行根本性的重新定義的短暫機會。這一機會轉瞬即逝，被驅逐者施加影響的機會空間在遷移後基本被封死。但是，村民們對他們遷移前那片刻解放的記憶、他們的策略性能力、自信、和被那個瞬間所磨礪出的期望仍固執地存在著，而這存在挑戰了保護情境下的被迫遷移帶來的邊緣化的永久性和不可逆轉性。