Dolly Kikon

Dolly Kikon is an Indian anthropologist and author from Nagaland. She works as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social and Political Sciences, Melbourne University.[1] She is also a Senior Research Advisor at the Australia India Institute, engaging in research and policy initiatives between India and Australia.[2] She is on the Editorial Board of the open source journal, The Highlander: Journal of Highland Asia [3] and serves on the Council of Advisors for The India Forum.[4]

Dolly Kikon
Born1975 (age 4546)
CitizenshipIndian
Academic background
Alma materStanford University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Delhi
Academic work
DisciplineAnthropology
Sub-disciplineDevelopment studies
Main interestsGender, Anthropology of the State, Citizenship, Human Rights, migration, Resource conflicts, Food Studies

Education

In 1997, Kikon received her B.A. from the Department of History, University of Delhi while studying in Miranda House. In 2001, she completed her LL.B from the Campus Law Center at the University of Delhi. She moved to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for her M. Phil. Her dissertation was titled Compromised democracy and the politics of participation: a case study of the Naga people from Northeast India. It looked into people's participation in Indian electoral system, development initiatives by Indian security forces and the Indo-Naga ceasefire negotiations.[5]

She obtained her Doctoral Degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University in 2013.[2] Titled, Disturbed Areas Act: Anxiety, Intimacy and the State in Northeast India, her dissertation looked into the "state-making processes in contemporary India... and the many unheralded, though significant ways in which people in the foothills transgress and embrace the cultural and political roles ascribed to them by the modern state."[6] During the doctoral studies, she received the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Dissertation Fieldwork Grant,[7] the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, the Center for South Asia Community Service Fellowship (Stanford University) and the Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.

Anthropology of Food

Kikon's work on food navigates through landscapes of hills, valleys and foothills in Northeast India, and challenges the existing notions of sovereignty limited to territoriality. The layered articulation of food and the sensory perceptions attached to it challenge anthropological understanding of indigenous food. Therefore, significantly, her work revolves around indigenous food and fermentation as a technique for preservation.

Her article, Tasty Transgression: Food and Social Boundaries in the Foothills of Northeast India, questions the sensory perception of classifying the taste of food as belonging either to the hills or the plains. Through her fieldwork, she points out that this distinction falls apart at landscapes classified as foothills, the geography that situates itself between the two. Farming practices at the foothills transgress social structures and taboos attributes exclusively to societies either in the hills or the valleys.

Through her article, Fermenting Modernity: Putting Akhuni on the Nation’s Table in India, she points out that cultures of reciprocity and eating in Northeast India are integral in order to challenge existing notions of sovereignty as a political project limited to territoriality. Speaking through akhuni – fermented Naga soya beans – she reiterates that everyday practices of eating are entangled with social relationships and histories of sharing and loss.[8]

Gender Studies

Women's Reservation in Nagaland

Kikon has been a vocal supporter for Women's Reservation in Nagaland. After the Supreme Court directive to implement reserved seats for Urban Local Bodies' election, protests erupted in Dimapur and Kohima which soon spread across the state. Kikon along with other women started a petition appealing to the Naga community and governments to 'recognise the importance of a gender inclusive political participation.'[9] She points out that the exclusion of women from powerful decision-making bodies formed under the customary law negates the notion that these institutions are pillars of justice."[9] The iteration of Naga culture as pure and unique has come to be contested in the ongoing debate about women’s rights.[10] She also draws parallels between the Indian state and the customary law institutions for "excluding the Naga women from all spheres of representative political processes."[9] She challenges the view that Naga women's assertions for gender justice is ‘anti-Naga’.[10]

Migration Studies

Kikon was granted the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stockholm University (2013–15) for "The Indian Underbelly: Marginalisation, Migration and State in the Periphery."[11] This work traced the increasing outmigration from Northeast India to the rest of the country. Focusing on migration, it examined the expansion and outcomes of developmental activities of the Indian state in areas associated with economic backwardness, subsistence agriculture and armed conflict.[12] Kikon and Karlsson define 'wayfinding' as a "voyage without a map or beaten paths or pathways to follow and with no clear destination or end station". In the process of wayfinding, young indigenous migrations struggle to make out what and where home is. As they move out of agricultural activities, they are constantly in search out new places and possibilities creating cultural fissures at various levels.[13]

Part of the project, Kikon and Bengt G. Karlsson also collaborated with Andrzej Markiewicz on a photoethnography project titled, Wayfinding.[14] The project was exhibited in Guwahati, Dimapur, Gangtok, Kathmandu,and Stockholm.

Human rights advocacy

Kikon worked as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of India and the Gauhati High Court between 2001 and 2002. Her legal advocacy work dealt with Article 371 (A), a constitutional provision relating to customary rights, custodianship over land and resource ownership as well as indigenous rights.[15]

She has been part of several fact-finding teams over the years in Northeast India: And Quiet Flows the Kopili, Report of Human Rights Violation in the Karbi-Anglong District of Assam (2002); Death, Insurgency, Impunity: A Report on Extra-Judicial Killings in Tinsukia, Assam (2011). She has been associated with the Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights, Sisterhood Network (Dimapur), Prodigals' Home (Dimapur),[2] The Turning Point (Mon district) and Action Aid (Northeast India). She continues to lend her voice towards the campaign to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958), an extra-constitutional regulation in India that gives access power to the Indian armed forces in Northeast India.

Notable Works

Monographs

  • 2004. Experiences of Naga Women in Armed Conflict: Narratives from a Militarized Society. Delhi: Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace.[16]
  • 2015. Life and Dignity: Women's Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Dimapur (Nagaland). Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre.[17]

Books

  • 2019. Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India. Seattle: University of Washington Press.[18]
  • 2019. (with Bengt G. Karlsson). Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.[19]

Personal life

Dolly Kikon belongs to the Lotha Naga tribe. Her ancestral village is Tsungiki in Wokha District. Kikon's mother Mhalo Kikon attended the Golaghat Mission Girls High School in Assam, an educational institution set up by the American missionaries. Kikon's father Wopansao Kikon studied in Kohima and played football for various Naga teams during his youth. Kikon's maternal grandparents Mr. Nzio Humtsoe and Ms. Oponlumi Humtsoe were both Baptist pastors. Today, the Lotha Baptist mission in Wokha district recognizes them as visionaries who contributed, along with their colleagues, in establishing the Christian faith among the Lotha community in Tsungiki village and Wokha town. Kikon's paternal grandfather Mr. Luke Kikon was a medical compounder and her grandmother Ms. Oreno Kikon was a trader who set up one of the first shops managed and owned by a woman in Wokha town. Kikon, Dolly; Karlsson, Bengt G. (2019). Leaving the land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 9781108494427.</ref> .[20]

References

  1. https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/774007-dolly-kikon
  2. Krocha, Vishü Rita (9 January 2020). "Social relations are based on respect, equality and partnerships: Dolly Kikon". The Morung Express. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  3. "Editorial Team | The Highlander: Journal of Highland Asia". www.highlanderjournal.org. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  4. "The Council of Advisors". The India Forum. 2019-02-25. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  5. Kikon, Dolly (2004). "Compromised democracy and the politics of participation : a case study of the Naga people from Northeast India". repository.ust.hk. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
  6. Kikon, Dolly (2013). Disturbed area acts anxiety, intimacy, and the state in Northeast India /.
  7. "Kikon, Dolly | The Wenner-Gren Foundation". www.wennergren.org. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  8. Kikon, Dolly (2015-04-03). "Fermenting Modernity: Putting Akhuni on the Nation's Table in India". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 38 (2): 320–335. doi:10.1080/00856401.2015.1031936. ISSN 0085-6401. S2CID 143402129.
  9. https://www.theindianweekly.com.au/crusade-against-patriarchy/
  10. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/nagaland-fight-for-women-quota/
  11. "Bengt G. Karlsson - Department of Social Anthropology". www.socant.su.se. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  12. "Dolly Kikon | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | India Office". Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  13. "WAYFINDING - Socialantropologiska institutionen". www.socant.su.se. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  14. "Wayfinding - Socialantropologiska institutionen". www.socant.su.se. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  15. "Satha Didi Bhuiini Takot | Seven Sisters Strong". Cordite Poetry Review. 2016-10-01. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  16. "Publications | WISCOMP". wiscomp.org. Retrieved 2020-02-14.
  17. Kikon, Dolly; Chakravarty, Uma (2015). Life and Dignity: Women's Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Dimapur. North Eastern Social Research Centre. ASIN 8192606252.
  18. "Living with Oil and Coal". University of Washington Press. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
  19. Kikon, Dolly; Karlsson, Bengt G. (May 2019). "Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India". Cambridge Core. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
  20. Kikon, Dolly; Karlsson, Bengt G. (2019). Leaving the land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 9781108494427.
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