Transnational Networks and Tribal Protests in Odisha: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The anti-globalisation movements include an array of protests and resistance actions of social groups and individuals in response to the dislocating consequences of neoliberal globalisation and its effects in the spheres of the economy, politics and identity/culture.An attempt has been made here to decipherthe dialectical interface between globalisation-induced social movements and transnational networks (TNWs) through the prism of tribal protestsin Odisha. The study brings out how social movements emerge to defend and recover threatened forms of life, social organization, economy and ecology when the forces of globalisation threaten to colonize people's life-worlds. Ironically, globalisation also generates mechanisms for contesting it by expanding and complicating the strategic choices available and forcing movement actors to look beyond their national boundaries to counter it. The TNWs which emerge in such paradoxical contextsprovide the linking mechanisms through which social movement participants engage in collective action across local and national boundaries and are involved in conflictual relations with their opponents by developing a shared and distinct collective identity. The TNWs have been shown to support local social movements as catalysts, structural units, sources of resource, and by helping to reframe affected people's understandings and norms of marginalisation, protest and empowerment.