van de Meerendonk Tim
Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
Contemp South Asia. 2020 Aug 5;28(3):362-373. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2020.1799941. eCollection 2020.
This article discusses local expressions of crisis in Beed district, central Maharashtra. Both in public and academic discourse crisis has become the term of choice for the many structural deficiencies which make agriculture an increasingly precarious livelihood in India. While most voices subscribe to the explanation that the current state of distress can be attributed to the unprofitability of agriculture, a wide range of structural explanations are suggested as to why this might be the case. Consequently, in some debates agricultural crisis runs the risk of moving the experiences, agency and postionalities of those imagined to be living through its consequences to the background. This paper counterbalances such causal explanations by empirically delving into the imaginaries of agricultural crisis as they are articulated, negotiated and employed by farmers in Maharashtra. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research, the paper examines how ideas of crisis are entangled with colloquial understandings by taking experiences of 'tension', an Anglicised term used to express feelings akin to stress, as object of inquiry. I argue that by claiming crisis through invoking feelings of tension farmers mobilise a plurality of meanings, narratives and moral evaluations about what is wrong with agriculture in this part of India.
本文探讨了马哈拉施特拉邦中部比德区危机的本土表现形式。在公共话语和学术话语中，危机已成为众多结构性缺陷的首选术语，这些缺陷使印度的农业生计日益岌岌可危。虽然大多数观点都认同当前的困境状态可归因于农业无利可图这一解释，但对于为何如此，人们也提出了各种各样的结构性解释。因此，在一些辩论中，农业危机有可能将那些被认为正在经历其后果的人们的经历、能动性和处境推到背景中去。本文通过实证研究深入探讨马哈拉施特拉邦农民所表达、协商和运用的农业危机想象，以此来平衡这种因果解释。基于十二个月的人种志研究，本文以“紧张”这一经历为研究对象，考察危机观念是如何与通俗理解相互交织的，“紧张”是一个英语化的术语，用来表达类似于压力的感受。我认为，农民通过援引紧张情绪来宣称危机，从而调动了关于印度这一地区农业问题的多种意义、叙事和道德评价。
