Seeds of Resistance: Adivasi Women’s “Acts of Care” in Sustaining Community Futures

Abstract

This ethnographic study aims to discuss the nuanced ways in which Adivasi (Indigenous) women in the two states of India—Jharkhand and Nagaland—resist the expansion of industrial agriculture through intimate multispecies relationships. Employing participant observation methods and interviews collected over a period of twenty-five months between 2018 and 2022, this study explores the network of traditional, subsistence-based work, embedded in cultural practices of Adivasi women, their communities, and their lands through the lens of “acts of care.” Acts of care encompass decisions related to meticulous selection, collection, and sharing of seeds, as well as the prioritization of local crops, traditional ecological knowledge, and farm labor over industrial farming. These Indigenous women—through their acts of care—navigate invasive neoliberal forces such as monoculture and excessive use of chemicals that threaten local biodiversity. In turn, these intimate multispecies relationships facilitate the protection of local biodiversity, and therefore each other. We argue that the everyday “acts of care” performed by Adivasi women hold profound significance, serving as both a resistance strategy against the expansion of industrial agriculture and a testament to their broader role in preserving cultural and ecological diversity. This study serves a dual purpose: it first centers women’s embodied knowledge and agency within Indigenous communities, which then reconceptualizes the idea of resistance – such as acts of care—as a feminist practice. This research will contribute to conceptualizing everyday resistance among Adivasi women communities, as well as scholarship on food sovereignty and Indigenous feminisms.