Andāza. Of land, survey and measurements

0576558 - OÚ 2024 eng A3 - Přednáška/prezentace nepublikovaná
Nair Ambujam, Meenakshi
Andāza. Of land, survey and measurements.
[Annual Conference on South Asia /51./. Madison – Online, 18.10.2023-21.10.2023]
Způsob prezentace: Přednáška
Pořadatel akce: Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison
URL akce: https://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/ 
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378009
Klíčová slova: field surveys and measurements * land * bureaucracy * guesstimates and estimates
Obor OECD: Antropology, ethnology

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in adivasi hamlets and state bureaucracies in Telangana in India, this presentation focuses on how adivasis and lower-level government officials like the patwari make sense of land’s acreage, borders and boundaries in the absence of regular physical surveys. The paper reveals that practices of mapping and survey—considered as exercises that scientifically measure the land and fix its boundaries and borders—may give way to practices of andāza, i.e. guesswork, intuition or approximation, invariably concretising and formalising guesswork as fact. Mobilising select ethnographic vignettes, I demonstrate that andāza functions in two important ways: for adivasis, andāza operates as a means through which they try to fragment their land, determine shifting boundaries or the loss of small extents of land. For patwaris, however, andāza becomes the basis on which updates to revenue records—land documents such as the title-deed and the record of rights—are made. In the absence of regular surveys, as a result, andāza serves as a manifestation of fluidity and spontaneity in the face of bureaucratic structures. This gives rise to particular forms of social negotiation that ultimately rely on guesswork, estimate and andāza, rather than purely mathematical and scientific operations. In the process, the paper highlights the unfixed nature of land and how land documents, expected to ‘mirror’ field realities, may not always do so.
Trvalý link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0347545