Studies of Odisha have often been simplistic and condensed to notions of a relatively prosperous, urbanized centre in the plain along the sea vis-à-vis a backward ‘hinterland’. Due to such notions of othering, Odisha beyond the coastal world-the largely Adivasi—populated highlands and ostensible backyard areas in coastal perspectives—has often been relegated to the background of both scholarly and popular imagination. Highland Odisha inverts such othering to draw attention to the highlands of Odisha in the west and south. It is based on fieldwork, participant observation, oral traditions, archival materials, and long-term historical and anthropological research by a range of scholars negotiating this region and its people. Significantly, while examining the less visible and often misrecognized highlands of Odisha, it questions dominant, coastal-centric views and acknowledges a multitude of perspectives on Odisha beyond any simplified dichotomy.
This collection of nine essays covers a range of themes, including social structures, patterns of kinship and relatedness; concepts of food, music or death and their significance related to wider cosmologies; interdependencies among highland communities and the position of migrant farmers between caste and Adivasi society; and processes of resistance and ideas around Nehruvian industrialization projects set up in the supposed ‘wilderness’.