The Nomos of the Region: State, Society and Environment in Kuttanad
Author: Kuriakose Mathew, mathew.kuriakose83@gmail.com
Department: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
University: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
Supervisor: D. Parthasarathy
Year of completion: 2019
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Urbanisation
, Regional Formation
, Politics in Kerala, Travancore
, Distributive State Apparatus
Areas of Research:
Regional and Urban Development
, Environment and Society
, Social Classes and Social Movements
Abstract
The thesis traces the evolution of nomos at the regional level through the case study of Kuttanad region in central Kerala, India. The starting point of the study is that it is the interactions between state, society and environment that are fundamental to understanding human affairs and that the nomos of these interactions are region specific. It suggests that the character of state, society and environment, and their transformation need to be understood within the framework of formation of regions. The study argues that there emerged a new nomos, based on a governmentality that combined pastoral power and political power, in Kuttanad as a result of the unfolding of modernity in the region. Moreover, the regional processes (re)constitute state, society and environment, thus aligning them to the specificities of the region. These regional processes are in tandem with the nomos of the region, which is derived from the particular social and environmental history of the region. The making of new social and political subjectivities, produced in/through the anti-caste and communist struggles, was central to the evolution of a region specific nomos in Kuttanad. The evolution of the nomos in Kuttanad has been reflected in the transformations of social and ecological geography of the region. The multiple contingent processes of state building, spatial and social stratification, the un/making of developmental zones, agrarian change, urbanisation, and commonising, among other processes, characterise the transformations of nomos in Kuttanad. The study emphasises mapping both physical and mental processes linked to the transformation of nomos in Kuttanad. The modulated exchanges between state, caste, class, religion, community and environment are examined as the constituents of social, political and ecological modernity in the region. The spatiality of welfare/illfare distribution, linked to caste and class struggles, is elaborated as the core logic of consolidation of Kuttanad as a region. In analysing the evolution of state, society and environment in a region, the study closely follows the statist, interventions from above as well as the quotidian, interventions from below. The attempt was to study state-building social movements from the standpoint of politics in ‘regions within regions’. Using mixed methodologies within a framework of Engaged Research approach, the study develops a sophisticated understanding of the development of a Distributive State Apparatus in/over Kuttanad and concludes by outlining a theory of the Distributive State Apparatus. The study also concludes that class struggle in different regions in South Asia, as in Kuttanad, and increasingly elsewhere in the world, takes the form of struggle to become a class, both at individual level and at the collective level albeit differently. Class politics does not begin after the full constitution of classes. It is integral to the very process of a class’ coming into existence. The beginning of class politics is defined by the entry process into a class.
