Knowledge, Power and Ignorance

Bidhan Kanti Das is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK). He has been teaching development studies for last 15 years and is also engaged in research in local forest management, and problems of marginalized communities. He has published research articles in national and international journal of repute. Gorky Chakraborty is faculty at Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK), working on issues related to the development of North East India. Abhijit Guha is a former Professor of Anthropology at Vidyasagar University. He acted as an expert of the Standing Committee on Rural Development of the Lok Sabha in 2008,advising on the Land Acquisition and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Amendment Bills. He is also the author of Encountering Land Grab: An Ethnographic Journey (2022).

Part I: Introduction Introduction: Exploring Knowledge, Power and Ignorance- Bidhan Kanti Das, Gorky Chakraborty and Abhijit Guha Part II: Epistemological Issues 1. Reimagining Ignorance and Forced Migration: Connections and Possibilities- Sudeep Basu 2. Knowledge, Power and Ignorance: Views from a Gendered Lens- Nagmani Rao Part III: Understanding Community Perspectives and the State 3. The Interplay of Knowledge, Power and Ignorance: Looking through the Lens of Community-Rajat Kanti Das 4. State Making, Ignorance and Power: Experiences from a De-notified Community in Central India- Ratna Dhar 5. The Sentinel Islanders and the Myth of Cannibalism: “Popular Ignorance” as Knowledge-Mundayat Sasikumar Part IV: Natural Resources, Power and Ignorance 6. What I believed to be true was part of the larger whole: the story of land grab in Medinipur-Abhijit Guha 7. Strategic Ignorance for Bureaucratic control? Examining forest governance practices in India-Bidhan Kanti Das 8. Knowledge and the Heft of Ignorance: The Government of Conservation Infrastructure in Sundarbans, West Bengal- Raktim Mazumder and Gorky Chakraborty 9. Knowledge and Policy/Practice in the Water Sector: Illustrating Contestations and Disconnectedness- K. J. Joy, Bejoy K. Thomas and Jyoti Nair Part V: Media and Production of Non-Knowledge 10. Trajectories of Post-Truth: Floating Signifiers and the Aspects of Ignorance in Public Sphere - Suman Nath 11. Media, Information and Quality of Knowledge: A Study of Health News from Two Newspapers- Subrata Mukherjee and Tiasha Dhar Part VI: Emerging Areas 12. Comics – A Children’s Genre? Censorship, Fantasy and Critique- Roma Chatterji 13. Ignoring Low-fee Private Schools in India- Soumyabrato Bagchi, Bhaskar Chakrabarti and Rituparna Das