Contacts, images and imagination; The impact of a road in the Jarwa reserve forest, Andaman Islands
Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: VISHVAJIT PANDYA Contacts, images and imagination The impact of a road in the Jarwa reserve forest, Andaman IslandsTo build or not to buildTremendous labour and resources are organized to construct a plain tarred road winding through dense unending forest.Planners conceive of its construction, administrators facilitate its coming, and society is motivated by the idea that the road will bring modernization and development.The inception of the road is regarded as a signifier of culturally constructed control, and of order over the disorderly expanse of nature.Consequently, the road becomes an instrument of transformation and acquires a symbolic and ritual role as things, ideas, and individuals move back and forth on it.The road's impact is evaluated and those who visualized its meanings make adjustments for those who inhabit the boundary-marked space through which the road was laid.This process makes up the very biography of a road, a discourse of history in which visualizers and builders of roads are often forced to consider if the road was really worth building, if one takes into account its impact on people. 1 Will trees ever grow back, covering the places that were cleared?Can the movement on the road be stopped?This article, based on fieldwork in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, discusses the road as experienced historically by the remaining 300 'primitive' Jarwa negrito hunters and gatherers in the South and Middle Andamans.2 The 250 km Andaman Trunk Road connects the southern point 1 This process has also been the case with many other massive civil engineering impositions and penetrations within the 'naturally' given space, such as the construction of dams or even the colonial plantation economy in South and Southeast Asia (Anderson and Huber 1988; Arnold and Guha 1995; Dentan et al. 1997;Eder 1987;Gadgil and Guha 1992).2 'Primitive' Jarwa tribe is the Indian government designation for the small-sized tribal groups who are regarded as needing special assistance due to their precarious demographic and economie profile.The local administration translates 'primitive' as adim jan jati (ancient human group), but the people on the island refer to Jarwas as Jungleey (people from the forest).However, it has yet to be confirmed whether all existing Jarwas regard themselves as Jarwas.
Author: Vishvajit Pandya
Language: Dutch
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W572951658