People of the Margins

Overview & Synopsis

How to describe a complex region? Is North-East India truly a mosaic of different people, a patchwork of immemorial, discrete and static cultures, or a formidable melting pot? Such questions are relevant for regional and Indian concerns as well as for the general anthropological theory. North-East India's cultural landscape might be considered as both more complex and more simple that it is commonly perceived to be. Whatever regularity one perceives seems always prone to many exceptions. But it may well be that the superficial mosaic hides blurred boundaries, countless commonalities and mutual influences among its parts. People of the Margins is an exploration of social connections and assemblages found on the physical, cultural and ethnic boundaries of the Assam-Meghalaya borderlands. The books strives at deciphering the complexity of North-East India through a new approach which deliberately considers that collective identities and social structures operate according to distinct though related logics. Ethnic and culturalist visions too often conceal the many people and patterns which circulate across such boundaries, linking up labelled groups into wide inter-ethnic and trans-ethnic regional webs. In a time when collective identities search for new pathes between assimilation and seclusion, the book describes fascinating examples of how human societies ceaselessly produce boundaries and ceaselessly weave connections to bridge them.