Abstract
The interrelationship between human society and nature is multifarious. Indeed, interrelationship involves different power plays either in explicit or implicit forms. In different indigenous societies of the world, different actors have been influencing the natural resource management process. With time, the power plays commenced by such actors have been altering their forms with different actors at the zenith of hierarchical man-environment relationship. This research is an attempt to explore a succession of such power plays around a historically famous wetland Merbeel and its island of Upper Assam. The research methods followed here is qualitative. A participatory research approach is used to explore different local dynamics. The research shows that the wetland and its island have perceivably been under a through hegemonic control of different groups, from time to time. Due to natural resource availability, Merbeel and its island have always been in the epicentre of these hegemonic power plays. This study provides a brief explanation of this succession process of these power plays dividing it into three periods.
Highlights
Political ecology provides an exploratory insight towards politics inherent in social interrelationships with nature, often with a focus on contentions and struggles over land and natural resources (Karlsson, 2015)
In the course of the study, it is noticed that power equation and associated sociohierarchical dynamics gets manifested in varying patterns ranging from pre-colonial times to the current period
The study traces a tendency on the part of different groups, trying to assert their socio-cultural, socio-religious and socio-political intention, to legitimise the power equation by various ‘discourses’ (Foucault, 2001)
Summary
Political ecology provides an exploratory insight towards politics inherent in social interrelationships with nature, often with a focus on contentions and struggles over land and natural resources (Karlsson, 2015). The nature of discursive struggles associated with these dynamics has some common characteristics. Such a commonality that gets reflected in every case of political ecology is the struggle for power (Svarstad, Benjaminsen and Overå, 2018). Power is discursive omnipresent but varies in forms in diverse contexts— from subtlety to domination in mutable intersections of space and time (Allen, 2003; Foucault, 2001). Power works intricately in vituperative correlation with ideological hinges of the normative order of the dominant class to establish a certain sense of ‘hegemony’ aimed at subtle consolidation of the edict of an undeniable hierarchical order
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