In the highlands of southern Odisha, India, farming families are weaving together old traditions and new alliances to survive as climate change and land privatisation upend their livelihoods. This research addresses a pressing question: what holds communities together when economic and environmental pressures pull them apart? While much attention focuses on division and conflict, the researcher spent nearly two years living with these communities to document how they create new forms of mutual support—what she calls "agroecological mutualities"—that blend farming practices, spiritual beliefs, and family labour. The work fills a gap in understanding how marginalised groups, particularly India's Scheduled Tribes and Castes, navigate the twin crises of climate change and agrarian precarity without simply collapsing under them. If successful, the fellowship will produce a book and academic articles that reframe how development scholars and policymakers think about sustainability. More concretely, the researcher will collaborate with NGOs and local scholars to inform policy on forest fire management in Eastern India—a practical intervention that could protect both livelihoods and ecosystems. The work also offers a conceptual toolkit for understanding how communities elsewhere might build resilience without waiting for top-down solutions.
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What brings communities together, and what drives them apart? This overarching question guides my research – a question with particular urgency in today's global context. My original ethnographic project examines how agroecological mutualities shape livelihood transitions and community relations in contexts of climate transformation and rapid generational change. Building from research in highland East India, I explore the intricate connections between people, land, the ecology, and 'spiritual' forces, and how they are being reshaped by shifting political economies. Conceptualising these dynamics of agroecological change is key to understanding the forces straining agrarian lifeworlds at the margins of the Anthropocene. As is the case globally, the twin crises of livelihood sustainability and climate change pose significant challenges in India, where roughly two-thirds of the population depends directly on agriculture. Precarity is entangled with India’s longstanding agrarian crisis, marked by land privatisation, dispossession, and widening socioeconomic divisions. In a worldwide pattern, those most impacted by climate change and livelihood precarity are often the poorest and most marginalised – in India, Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes, communities at the lowest rungs of India’s socioeconomic and religious hierarchies. Yet, India's vast sociohistorical diversity shapes the kinds of transformation taking place: in some areas, entire ways of life are disappearing; elsewhere, distinctive ways of making a living persist. Through almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the highlands of southern Odisha, my research reveals how communities navigate growing inequalities and new forms of precarity. It shows how they creatively respond to the challenges by crafting diverse livelihoods, reinterpreting older traditions, and forging new solidarities. In a world where divisions within and between communities seem to be deepening, I centre the interconnections that persist and the new mutualities that are emerging. As an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, I will build on my PhD research to consolidate and amplify the findings. A central goal of the fellowship is to refine an original conceptual framework on more-than-human mutualities and emerging inequalities in agrarian landscapes, theorising how family livelihoods are shaped by seasonal cycles and rhythms rooted in distinct agroecologies. My approach, combining rigorous ethnography with historical analysis, offers original theoretical perspectives on issues of sustainability, climate transformation, and social change. During the fellowship, I will consolidate my academic writings, expand research audiences, and lay the groundwork for a new project. The primary academic objectives are to complete my book manuscript, 'On Shifting Grounds: Agroecology, Livelihoods, and Religious Change in Highland Odisha', and to publish an academic article in a leading journal, 'Development and Change', extending beyond my anthropological training to establish a presence in development studies. Beyond academia, I am committed to making my research accessible and generating wider societal impacts. As part of non-academic work during the fellowship, I will engage broader audiences (in the UK, Europe, and India) through generalist pieces of writing and a podcast recording on issues of agroecological relations and livelihood change at the margins of the Anthropocene. Additionally, I will strengthen collaborations with scholars and organisations in Europe and India through policy-focused work, specifically on the problem of forest fires in Eastern India. Complemented by the strong climate expertise at UEA, I will work alongside NGOs and local scholars to orient policy discussions and potential interventions related to issues of forest fire management, climate adaptation, and sustainability in India and other global contexts.
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