Where Is Displacement?

At the annual conference of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Memphis, Tennessee, US, held from March 25-29, “Displacement, Resettlement and Rehabilitation” was one of the three main themes. The conference was attended by a diverse crowd of applied social scientists from around the world. There were 16 panels on the theme itself and between those of us from India we attended at least five of these.

The plenary session set the tone for most of the discussion on the theme, and we were not too shocked to find that despite years of mature struggle and debate on the question of prior informed consent, democratic process and the paradigm of development that induces large-scale displacement, there was no mention of these issues by the plenary speakers.