Bücher von Soma Chaudhuri

VI realm between distributed computing and networking, namely, Modeling Biological Networks, Network Security, Algorithmic Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks, and Optical Networking. This was made possible by the efforts of the Tutorial Chairs, Sr- har Iyer and Pinaki Mitra. The Organizing Committee worked hard to ensure that the participants enjoyed a comfortable stay and the technical meetings proceeded as smoothly as possible. We are grateful to the General Vice Chair, Sukumar Nandi, for arranging to hold the conference in Guwahati and for all he did to make the conference a success. Thanks are due to the Publicity Chairs, P. K. Das and Sriram V. Pemmaraju, for their great work in publicizing the event both locally and internationally, to the Publication Chairs, H. S. Paul and Srikanta Tirthapura, for their tremendous efforts in compiling the final proceedings, and to the Organizing Chair, D. Goswami, the Finance Chair, J. K. Deka, and the Scholarship Chair, S. V. Rao, for their hard work. We are grateful to the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati for extending the logistic support to the conference. We thank Sukumar Ghosh, the head of the ICDCN Steering Committee, for his guidance, continuous support and advice.

Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India: Tempest in Teapot is a unique book that brings together a holistic theoretical approach on the subject of witchcraft accusations, specifically those taking place inside a tea workers community in India. Using a combination of in-depth and extensive qualitative methods, and drawing on sociological, anthropological, and historical perspectives, Chaudhuri explores how adivasi (tribal) migrant workers use witchcraft accusations to deal with worker-management conflict. Chaudhuri argues that witchcraft accusations can be interpreted as a periodic reaction of the adivasi worker community against their oppression by the plantation management. The typical avenues of social protest are often unavailable to marginalized workers due to lack of organizational and political representation and resources. As a result, the dain (witch) becomes a scapegoat for the malice of the plantation economy. Within this discourse, witch hunts can be seen not as exotic and primitive rituals of a backward community, but rather as a powerful protest by a community against its oppressors. The book attempts to understand the complex network of relationshipsties of friendship, family, politics, and genderthat provide the necessary legitimacy for the witch hunt to take place. In most cases examined here, seemingly petty conflicts within the villagers often escalate to a hunt. At the height of the conflict, the exploitative relationship between the plantation management and the adivasi migrant workers often gets hidden. The book demonstrates how witchcraft accusations should be interpreted within this backdrop of labor-planters relationship, characterized by rigidity of power, patronage, and social distance.Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India should appeal to criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, labor historians, gender scholars, labor migration scholars, witch hunt and witchcraft accusation global scholars, adivasi scholars, South Asian scholars, and anyone interested in India's tribes, witchcraft accusations, gender in a global world, labor conflict, and Indian tea plantations.