Reproducing Everyday Peace in North India: Process, Politics, and Power

Abstract

Matters of war and violence continue to prove seductive foci for geographical analysis, whereas the concept of peace has remained undertheorized, more often constructed in negative terms as the absence of violence. This article responds to calls within the academy and beyond for a more critical look at the geographies of peace, through an examination of everyday peace between “Hindu traders” and “Muslim weavers” in urban north India. Building on qualitative field research conducted between 2006 and 2008 in the silk sari industry in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the primary focus is on the lived realities of Muslim weaver subalterns. It shows how everyday peace is socially produced and reproduced through the interactive work of practice and narrative, which is embedded within a particular cultural political economy and intimately linked to local structures of power and politics. In the context of these intercommunity work relations, peace can be conceptualized as a by-product of interdependent economic relations, simultaneously constituting the conditions for its reproduction. For Muslim weavers who are more often marginalized within these economic spaces, learning, pragmatism, and resilience informed their actions to rework existing patterns of power without jeopardizing the future of everyday intercommunity peace. Illustrating the generative potential of peace, this article reinforces the need for further research into the seemingly empty expanses of social life that appear after or without politics.