In episode 4 of season 5, we are joined by Mr. Roderick Wijunamai, a PhD scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University, USA, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Highland Institute, Kohima. His work sits at the intersection of political ecology, agrarian change, and Indigenous studies, where he closely examines how ecological transformations are reshaping food systems and livelihoods in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands.
Drawing from immersive fieldwork across Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, and Mizoram, this conversation unpacks the complex and often unsettling story of oil palm expansion in Northeast India. What emerges is not a simple narrative of development but a layered inquiry into a crop that is at once a promise and a provocation. We explore whether oil palm is truly a pathway to economic self-sufficiency or a looming ecological disruption - probing its implications for health, environment, and indigenous ways of life. Situating this within a longer historical arc, the episode traces how India’s dependence on edible oil imports has shaped the sudden push toward oil palm cultivation in the region.
Through an anthropological lens, Roderick invites us to see palm oil beyond its materiality - as a financial commodity, a state-driven project, and a deeply contested site where national economic ambitions collide with indigenous geographies and lived realities. At the heart of this discussion lies a more difficult question: how does one write about these tensions ethically? As an anthropologist, how do you protect interlocutors, navigate anonymity, and represent a reality where an “environmentally unsustainable plantation” may simultaneously offer tangible financial benefits to local communities?
Tune in to unpack these layered questions and reimagine how we understand development, ecology, and lived realities in the borderlands.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are those of the individual podcasters. Listener discretion is advised.
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