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Online Presentation - Politics and Environmental Policies: The Case of Koshi Floods in Bihar
The Institute of Human Geography, Prof. Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Fund for Social Geography, and the Patliputra Intelligentsia Forum (PIF) cordially invite you to an online presentation by Rahul Yaduka, a doctoral researcher at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University (Delhi). The talk would be chaired by Dr. Dinesh K. Mishra (Jamshedpur), and the discussants include Dr. Ajay Dixit (Institute for Social and Environmental Transition - Nepal, Lalitpur), Prof. Arupjyoti Saikia (Indian Institute for Technology, Guwahati), and Prof. Manindra N. Thakur (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi).
The presentation is scheduled for March 22, 2024, 3:00 PM IST on Zoom.
Abstract: The lower Koshi region in northern Bihar of India, adjacent to the Indo-Nepal border, suffers the perpetual agony of floods, land erosion, displacement, and out-migration. Despite these becoming a permanent feature of the ecological scape, primarily due to ill-thought flood control interventions, the annual floods evoke a false sense of shock and surprise. Mounting scholarly critique has yet to affect any reconsideration of the dominant flood management paradigm in the region.
The research is a product of a three-year-long immersion, almost akin to ethnography, in multiple flood-prone and allegedly flood-protected villages in the Supaul district of the Koshi diyara (the fluvial land-waterscape). It has attempted to understand the gradual process through which the Koshi diyara has been transformed, primarily through flood-control interventions and development infrastructure, and these have had a definite impact on the region’s ecology, society and polity.
The research attempts to address three major questions: How have the flood control and development infrastructures transformed the ecological backdrop of the region? How does the community perceive the structural interventions? How does the community resist the structural intervention? The answers to these questions illuminate the politics of disaster management policies and the politics of knowledge-making in the region and the globe in general.
Human Geography - Current Issue
The first issue of 2024 (17:1, March) of Human Geography is out! Enjoy Substantive Articles by Joseph Nevins, Kevin R. Cox, Marie Chase, Adrienne Johnson, Antulio Rosales, Eva van Roekel, Peter Howson, Coco Kanters, Daniel Manzione Giavarotti, Ana Carolina Gonçalves Leite, and Clara Lemme Ribeiro. Contentions were written by Levi Gahman, Amedeo Policante, Erica Borg, Martha E. Gimenez, and Kwame Adovor Tsikudo. Review was contributed by Tod D. Rutherford. Visual Intervention was provided by Asif Mehmood and Sajjad Hasnain.
This issue also contains a special Symposium on Mike Davis, the Radical Urban Activist-Scholar, with Ananya Roy as the Guest Editor and contributions by Ananya Roy, Juan De Lara, Michael Storper, Deshonay Dozier, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Susanna Hecht.
Check out the detailed ToC of the Current Issue and also those of Past Issues.
We look forward to your submissions for the journal. Contact any of our editors to get started!
Human Geography Publication Awards, 2024
The Institute of Human Geography confers the 2024 Human Geography Publication Awards to the following scholars for their publications in the Human Geography journal:
Best paper: Erin Flanagan (York University, Canada) & Dennis Raphael (York University, Canada) From personal responsibility to an eco-socialist state: Political economy, popular discourses and the climate crisis
Best Paper by an Early Career Academic: Sarah Cheikhali (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) The spatial antecedents for drone governance in Afghanistan
Best Review: F. T. C. Manning (San Francisco Community Land Trust, USA) Geographies of ground rent: Periodizing ground rent theory, spatializing ground rent refusal
Best Contention: Jude Fernando (Clark University, USA) The citizen’s uprising in Sri Lanka: A watershed moment against racial capitalism
The Institute of Human Geography confers the Human Geography Publication Awards for articles, reviews and contention pieces published in the journal Human Geography.
Awards are given for:
Best Paper (substantive article, $400 plus citation)
Best Paper by an Early Career Academic (substantive article by graduate student or assistant professor, $200 plus citation)
Best Review ($200 plus citation)
Best Contention ($200 plus citation)
The winning authors would be announced around April each year. The awards are announced in April based on the pieces published in Human Geography during the previous year. Editors and editorial board members are not eligible for these awards.
Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture 2024
The Institute of Human Geography helped establish and co-sponsor the first Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture delivered at the 44th Institute of Indian Geographers Meet and International Conference. The first Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture was delivered by Prof. Atiya Habeeb Kidwai. The Plenary Lecture was given on Tuesday, 23 January 2024, at the Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha Auditorium, Cotton University (Guwahati, India). The lecture was chaired by Sohail Hashmi.
Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad (1932-2006) was the stalwart of social geography in India and played a key role in the establishment of the geography program at the Center for the Study of Regional Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University where he trained generations of scholars to work on issues of inequality, marginalization, and social and cultural justice.
2023 IHG Research Grants Awarded
Congratulations to all the recipients of the 2023 IHG Research Grants - Peter White, Joel Hopkins, Richard Kirk, Amrita Sharma and Nikos Kapitsinis!
Global Finance Capital - Richard Peet
IHG is proud to present Dick's latest publication. Get your digital copy here.
Call for Papers - Human Geography Special Issue
The Pluriverse of Transitions: Towards Anti-colonial and Insurrectional Energy Transformations
POLLEN 2024 (June 11-13) and Special Issue.
Organizers: Carlos Tornel (tornelc@gmail.com, Durham University) and Alexander Dunlap (alexander.a.dunlap@gmail.com, Boston University).
More details here.