PUBLICATIONS

Much of Alpa’s writing, inspiration and engagement emerges from years of living as an anthropologist, a participant observer, among India’s indigenous people in the forests in the heart of the country. Below are a list of her academic writings, some of which can also be accessed on academia.edu and ResearchGate.

BOOKS

2024 The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India. HarperCollins: London and Delhi

2018 Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerrillas. London: Hurst; Chicago: University of Chicago Press; New Delhi: HarperCollins.

2017 Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in 21st Century India. London: Pluto Press (co-authored with Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramditya Thakur). 

2017 Behind the Indian Boom: Inequality and Resistance at the heart of the economic growth. Kolkatta: Adivaani. 

2010 In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham (N.C.) and London: Duke University Press. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

EDITED WORKS

2021   In Honour of David Graeber. Focaal blog on Lost People, Value, Debt, Myth, Bureaucracy and Bullshit Jobs (Ed with Becky Bowers, Megan Laws and Giulio Ongaro). Based on a term of weekly LSE Research Seminars on Anthropological Theory that I convened in honour of our late colleague.

2016 'Beyond citizenship: Adivasi and Dalit Political Pathways in India' (edited with Nicholas Jaoul). Special issue of Focaal  Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 76: 3-14.

2015 'Emancipatory Politics: A Critique' (Edited with Stephan Feuchtwang). Open Anthropology Cooperative Press. 

2014 ‘Savage Attack: Adivasi Insurgency in India' (Edited with Crispin Bates). New Delhi: Social Science Press.

2013 ‘The Underbelly of the Indian Boom' (Edited with Stuart Corbridge). Special issue of Economy and Society 42: (3).

2013 ‘Agrarian Questions and Left Politics in India' (Edited with Jens Lerche and Barbara Harriss-White). Special issue of Journal of Agrarian Change 13: (3).

2013 ‘Towards an Anthropology of Affirmative Action: the Practices, Policies and Politics of Transforming Inequality in South Asia' (Edited with Sara Shneiderman). Special issue of Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 65.

2012 ‘Windows Into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal’ (Edited with Judith Pettigrew). New Delhi: Social Science Press. An earlier version of this edited collection was published as a special double issue of Dialectical Anthropology 33 (3/4), 2009.

2006 ‘A Double-edged Sword: Protection and State Violence’ (Edited with Toby Kelly). Special issue of Critique of Anthropology 26 (3).

ESSAYS

2024 When Decolonisation is Hijacked. American Anthropologist.

2022 ‘Why I Write: In a climate against intellectual dissidence.’ Current Anthropology. 63 (5): 570-598 (Includes Comments and Shah’s response titled ‘Why Write’)

2022 Understanding patterns of structural discrimination against migrant and other workers in some countries of South and West Asia. International Labour Organisation (with Igor Bosc, Jens Lerche, Miranda Fajerman and Neha Wadhawan).

2021 ‘What if We Selected our Leaders by Lottery? Democracy by Sortition, Liberal Elections and Communist Revolutionaries.’ Development and Change (The 2020 inaugural David Graeber Memorial Lecture and the 2019 Key Note Lecture for the Development Studies Association annual conference).

2021 ‘For an Anthropological Theory of Praxis: Dystopic Utopia in Indian Maoism and the rise of the Hindu Right.’ Social Anthropology. 29 (1): 68-86.

2021 ‘Black Lives Matter, Capital, and Ideology: Spiralling out from India’ (with Jens Lerche). British Journal of Sociology 72: 93-105.

2021 ‘Conjugated Oppression: Race, Caste, Tribe, Gender and Class’ (with Jens Lerche). Avneshi. Broadsheet on Contemporary Politics. 15. (Also translated into Tamil).

2020 ‘Migration and the Invisible Economies of Care: Production, social reproduction and seasonal migrant labour in India.’ (with Jens Lerche) Royal Geographical Society Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers. 45: 719-734.

2018 'Conjugated oppression under contemporary capitalism: class relations, social oppression and agrarian change in India' (with Jens Lerche). Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (5): 927-949

2017 'Naxalbari at its Golden Jubilee: Fifty Recent Books on the Maoist Movement in India'. Modern Asian Studies: 1-55. 

2017 'Ethnography? Participant observation, a potentially revolutionary praxis'. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1): 45-59. (Translated into Portugese and made into a comic adaptation).

2017 'Humaneness and Contradictions: India's maoist-inspired Naxalites'. Economic and Political Weekly  52 (21): 52-56. 

2015 'Class Struggle, the Maoists and the Indigenous Question in Nepal and India'  (with Feyzi Ismail). Economic and Political Weekly  L (35): 112-123. 

2015 'Maoist Movement (Naxalites)' in Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies,  Gita Dharampal-Frick et al (eds). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 

2014 'The Muck of the Past: Revolution and Social Transformation in Maoist India'. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 20: 337-356 (the Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2012).

2014 'Religion and the Secular Left: Subaltern Studies, Birsa Munda and Maoists'. Anthropology of this century 9.

2014 'La Lutte Révolutionnaire des Maoïstes Continue en Inde' (article adapted by Jean-Paul Gaudillère and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal). Mouvements 77 (1): 55-75.

2013 'Response to Nandini Sundar's Response to 'The Tensions Over Citizenship in a Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Situation: The Maoists in India'. Critique of Anthropology 33: 476.

2013 ‘The Intimacy of Insurgency: Beyond Coercion, Greed, or Grievance in Maoist India'. Economy and Society 42 (3): 480-506.

2013 ‘Introduction: The Underbelly of the Indian Boom’ (with Stuart Corbridge). Economy and Society 42 (3): 335-347.

2013 ‘The Agrarian Question in a Maoist Guerrilla Zone: Land, Labour and Capital in the Forests and Hills of Jharkhand, India'. Journal of Agrarian Change 13 (3): 424-450.

2013 ‘Introduction: Agrarian Questions and Left Politics in India’ (with Jens Lerche and Barbara Harriss-White). Journal of Agrarian Change 13 (3): 337-350.

2013 ‘The Tensions Over Liberal Citizenship in a Marxist Revolutionary Situation: The Maoists in India'. Critique of Anthropology 33 (1): 91-109.

2013 ‘Preface’ (with Bernard D’Mello). An Anthology of José Carlos Mariátegui. Translated by Mark Becker and Harry E. Vanden. New Delhi: Cornerstone Publications.

2013 ‘Conservative Force or Contradictory Resource? Education and Affirmative Action in Jharkhand, India’ (with Rob Higham). COMPARE: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 43 (6): 718-739.

2013 ‘Affirmative Action and Political Economic Transformations: Secondary Education, Indigenous People and the State in Jharkhand, India' (with Rob Higham). Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology (65): 80-93.

2012 ‘In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India', in Windows into a Revolution, Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew (eds). New Delhi: Social Science Press. An earlier version of this edited collection was published as a special double issue of Dialectical Anthropology 33 (3/4), 2009.

2012 'Éliminer la Classe, la Caste et l'Indigénéité dans l’Inde Maoïste’. Terrain: Revue d’Ethnologie de l’Europe  58: 64-81.

2011 ‘Resurrecting Scholarship on Agrarian Studies in India' (with Barbara Harriss-White). Economic and Political Weekly XLVI (39): 13-18.

2011 ‘India Burning: the Maoist Movement’ in A Companion to the Anthropology of India, Isabelle Clark-Decès (ed). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

2010 ‘Alcoholics Anonymous: the Maoist Movement in Jharkhand, India'.  Modern Asian Studies 45 (5): 1095-1117.

2009 ‘Morality, Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand, Eastern India'. Journal of Development Studies 45 (3): 295-313.

2007 ‘Keeping the State Away: Democracy, Politics and Imaginations of the State in India’s Jharkhand'. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (1): 129-145.

2006 ‘The Labour of Love: Seasonal Migration from Jharkhand to the Brick Kilns of Other States in India'. Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s) 40 (1): 91-119.

2006 ‘Markets of Protection: The Maoist Communist Centre and the State in Jharkhand, India’. Critique of Anthropology 26 (3): 297-314.

REVIEWS

2016 'The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal'  – By Paul Bappaditya. Pacific Affairs 89 (2): 472-474.

2015 'India's Democracy: Illusion of Inclusion'. Economic and Political Weekly 50 (41): 33-36 (co-authored with Jens Lerche).

2015 'The Saint in the Banyan Tree: Christianity and Caste Society in India' – By David Mosse. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal.

2014 'The World Before Her' – Film directed by Nisha Pahuja. Pacific Affairs 87 (3): 662-664 (co-authored with Simon Chambers).

2013 'The Anti-politics of 'Declarations of Dependence' (Comment on 'Declarations of Dependence' (2013) by James Ferguson). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute19 (2): 254-255. 

2012 'Eco-Incarceration? Walking with the Comrades' (Comment on Broken Republic (2012) by Arundhati Roy).  Economic and Political Weekly 47 (21): 32-34. 

2009 'Asian Voices in a Postcolonial Age' – By Susan Bayly. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2): 430-431.

2009 'Ghosts of War in Vietnam' – By Heonik Kwon. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (1): 194-194. 

2008 'A Brief History of Neoliberalism' – By David Harvey. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (3): 707-708.

2008 'Social Movements: an Anthropological Reader' – Edited by June Nash. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (2): 469-470.

2007 'Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary' – By Veena Das. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (4):1056-1057.

2006 'Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia' – By Filippo Osella and Katy Gardener. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (4): 878-879. 

2000 'Food Policy and the Indian State: the Public Distribution System in South India' – By Jos Mooij. Biblio V (9/10): 11-12 (co-authored with Stuart Corbridge).