Challenging precarity through community life: Lifeways among the tribes of Nagaland and Andaman

Abstract

Etymologically, the term precarity was used by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to describe a condition of job-related insecurity. Anna Tsing (2015), drawing from Bourdieu, defines precarity as a condition that renders life “without the promise of stability,” while Pembroke (2018) underpins its nature of abeyance or the foreclosure of life. Although precarity has often been examined in urban settings under neoliberal conditions, its presence, or lack thereof, in tribal life has received little attention. When tribal life in Northeast India is considered, it becomes evident that traditional customs and practices often counteract precarity and vulnerability, not only through environmentally sustainable practices but also through the symbiotic functioning of their community life. Tribal communities exemplify a strongly knit social fabric that helps mitigate vulnerability. In contrast, within contemporary modern society, as this close-knit system collapses, there is an increase in individual vulnerability. Using this argument as a point of departure, this article seeks to study the structure and functionality of community life in countering precarity by analysing the representation of tribal communities in the ethnographical fictional works of Easterine Kire and Pankaj Sekhsaria.