Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9600
+32 25889658
ISSN: 2155-9600
+32 25889658
Sujata Dutta Hazarika
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Nutr Food Sci
Hunger and food management is by far the most significant connection that unites humanity in its manifold endeavours. From the perspective of history of global capitalism, this is probably the first stage of history where marginalized voices of indigenous communities are finding an agency in the formal platforms of global cooperation. The long drawn era of dumbfounded silence that characterized colonial capitalism, has since time immemorial marginalized voices of indigenous people and their invaluable contribution of indigenous knowledge system to human sustenance on earth. This knowledge that was primarily folk or rural, informal, undocumented, oral based on experiential knowledge by far went undocumented due to the hegemony of a colonial capitalism that was driven by the mechanical model of western scientific knowledge that was formal, rational scientific, replicable and mainstream. In this paper I would like to explore the invaluable contribution of the indigenous communities living in the North East India, their traditional worldview of sustainable living and indigenous knowledge system aimed to perpetuate self-management vs a vis community participation in creating a holistic, equitable, non-extractive and environmentally sensitive pattern of food management that aims at complete mitigation of hunger, through sustainable practices of natural resource management, common property resources and democratic institutions like autonomous local district councils for community participation . At a time when humanity has long forgotten to live sustainably, it is very important that we document this endangered legacy of sustainable practices to address issues of food security, food crisis and systemic challenges of constructed hunger.
Sujata Dutta Hazarika Deputy Director is a sociologist with eighteen years of experience in research in areas of sustainability and public policy, governance, sustainable development, education and natural resource management. Founder faculty of Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati from 2004, In 2009, she initiated the North East Centre For Research and Development IGNOU as the overall in charge of the national centre established by Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to facilitate public policy research in North East India. She was awarded the Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship for the year 2010-2011 and hosted by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI), University of California Berkeley to work on Eco Village initiatives in United States: Understanding Social Change in the new consciousness of Sustainability’