
Kudankulam
The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant
Raminder Kaur(Author)
OUP India (Publisher)
Published on 4. August 2020
Book
Hardback
392 pages
978-0-19-949871-0 (ISBN)
Description
Since the 1980s, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu has faced multiple forms of resistance. Women and men from different walks of life - fishers, farmers, environmentalists, activists, writers, scholars, teachers, journalists, doctors, and lawyers among many others - have come together to combat the deadly radioactive repercussions and repression that come with the development of a high-security nuclear installation. Drawing upon their experiences, this historical and ethnographic study accounts for the anti-nuclear campaign's part in 'right-to-lives' movements while engaging with the (re)production of knowledge and ignorance in the understanding of radiation, and efforts to create an evidence base in response to the otherwise unavailable or insufficient data on the environment and public health in India. Tracing the grassroots struggle for 'energy justice' off- and on-line, the author looks into the larger questions of development, democracy, and nationalism. These have marked not just parts of India identified for large-scale constructions, but also other regions of the world where state functionaries have much to gain from corporate collaborations at the cost of local residents who lose their livelihoods, and are forcibly displaced, persecuted, or even killed in order to execute governmental designs in the name of the nation.
Reviews / Votes
...Kudankulam is both an invaluable record of what it means to live with nuclear power across multiple material and symbolic registers and a powerful indictment of a feckless nuclear establishment. * Itty Abraham, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute * Kaur writes with sympathy, empirical depth, and theoretical acuity about the movement to stop the construction of the nuclear reactors at Kudankulam. * Hugh Gusterson, Author of People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex and Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War * This exceptional book illuminates the social and political lives around the Kudankulam nuclear power plant by adopting a sharply focused ethnographic lens on the agency of people challenging the destructive pathways of capital. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the multifaceted ways in which environmental and social justice activism and collective struggles challenge the very basis of modernity and "development". * Navtej Purewal, Professor of Political Sociology and Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK * Raminder Kaur provides a scholarly, insightful, and empathetic account of the heroic (or should it be heroinic) struggle waged against the construction of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant by the people of that area. Based on years of careful fieldwork, this book is a fitting tribute to that landmark struggle. * V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Delhi
India
Target group
Adult education
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-949871-0 (9780199498710)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Raminder Kaur is professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Atomic Mumbai: Living with the Radiance of a Thousand Suns (2013) and Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism (2003/5). She is also co-author of Diaspora and Hybridity (with Virinder Kalra and John Hutnyk, 2005), and Adventure Comics and Youth Cultures in India (with Saif Eqbal, 2018). She is co-editor of Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World (2015), Mapping Changing Identities: New Directions in Uncertain Times (2013), Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (2009), Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens (2005) and Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics (1999). Aside from her scholarly writing, she has also produced several scripts for theatre productions www.sohayavisions.com
Author
Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, School of Global StudiesProfessor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex
Content
- Table of Contents
- Map
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Chapter 1: Radiation Burdens
- · Democratic Development?
- · Altering the National-Nuclear Narrative
- · Criticality
- Chapter 2: A Nuclear Paradise
- · The Place and the People
- · Rare Minerals
- · The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and Township
- · Neo-Brahmanism
- · An Anxious Accolade
- · Deep Vision
- Chapter 3: Cultures of Dissent
- · Movements in Perspective
- · The Initial Phase
- · The Neoliberal Era
- · The Tyranny of Technicality
- · A New Philosophy of Life
- Chapter 4: The World of In/visibles
- · Knowledge, Ignorance and Uncertainty
- · Enchantment
- · Safe?
- · Disenchantment
- · W/holes
- Chapter 5: Full Lives
- · Countering Risks
- · Josef
- · Savitri
- · Rajesh
- · Risky Times
- Chapter 6: The Plot Thickens
- · The Nuclear State of Exception
- · The Days Before
- · The Public Hearing
- · The Days After
- · Equivocal Victories
- Chapter 7: Discipline and Deviance
- · The Discursive Web of Statistics
- · Information Warfare
- · Planning the Survey
- · Ethnography of a Survey
- · Drops of Experience
- · 'Numbers are Required, Not Reasons'
- · Public Presentations
- · Speaking to Power
- Chapter 8: An Unlikely Powerhouse
- · A Siren Call
- · Open-Air Jail
- · Waging Non-Violence
- · A University without Walls
- · The Backbone
- · Cracking Concrete
- Chapter 9: Digitalia
- · The Un/holy Trinity
- · A Digital Letter by a 'Foreign Hand'
- · Planetary Forces
- Chapter 10: Do we Exist?
- · Silent, Quick and Slow
- · Crackdown to Meltdown
- · Onlife Ondeath
- · Toxygen
- · Murk
- Chapter 11: The Sparks that Hover
- · Looking Back
- · Looking Forwards
- · Embers
- Epilogue
- Index