LMN is delighted to announce our third Resisting Mining Book Club of 2026 with guest speaker Bitopi Dutta, who will join us to discuss her book, Mining, Displacement, and Matriliny in Meghalaya: Gendered Transitions (Routledge India, 2023).
About the book
Mining, Displacement, and Matriliny in Meghalaya explores how Development-Induced Displacement (DID) radically restructures gender relations in indigenous tribal societies. Through an in-depth case study of the Indian state of Meghalaya, one of the few matrilineal societies of the world, it analyses how people cope with conflicts in their perception of self, family, and society brought on by the transition from traditional modes of living to increased urbanisation, and how these experiences are different for men and women.
It looks at the ways in which this gendered change is experienced inter-generationally in different contexts of people’s lives, including work and leisure activities. The book also investigates people’s attitudes towards matrilineal structures and their perception of change on matriliny where mining has played a role in building their view of their matrilineal tradition. Drawing on extensive interviews with individuals directly affected by this phenomenon, the book makes a significant contribution to the study of development-induced displacement.
Bitopi will give an introductory lecture which will be followed by a Q&A. You do not need to have read the book to attend this meeting.
About the author
Bitopi Dutta is an Assistant Professor at the School for Liberal Studies at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, India. She has been an Irish Research Council Awardee Scholar by the Government of Ireland and has four books on displacement studies including one on one traditonal method of conflict resolution to her authorship. Prior to joining UPES, she has taught and continues to be associated with film-making with her production house called Vortex Films, whose first feature film production has won the National Films Award in 2021. She is one of the pioneers of the Queer Movement in Northeast India and was the co-organiser of the first Queer Pride walk in Assam which took place in 2014. Her research interests include Gender and sexuality, Indigenous people, displacement studies, qualitative research.