Many people have contributed to this book in direct and indirect ways. To everyone I know and have known in India over many years of travels: the time we have spent together, the rich experiences we have shared, and all the things you have taught me about your country have been indispensable in shaping everything I may claim to have understood. There are so many of you that I do not even know how to start. Most immediately involved in the research project leading up to this book, I would like to thank Y. D. Imran Khan, my dear friend and collaborator. Through your help and persistence, I was fortunate enough to get to know people in the village I have called âMekkenurâ in Karnataka. To the people in âMekkenurâ: Your generosity has been invaluable. A. R. Vasavi also unfailingly supported me and facilitated my access into the field, both opening doors for me and providing me with intellectual inspiration. Faculty, staff and PhD candidates at Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bengaluru helped me in initial phases in crucial ways, and I made many friends in the process, some of whom, including Asheesh Navneet, I continue to have regular conversation with concerning agrarian matters in India. Acknowledging my web of relations in India would not be complete, however, without also mentioning key individuals who inspired research in India many years ago â Pamela Price and Arild Engelsen Ruud deserve guru-like veneration for this.
At the Centre for Development and the Environment (sum) at the University of Oslo, I would especially like to thank Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Desmond McNeill, whose able supervision throughout the PhD project that is the foundation for the present book has been a source of constant inspiration, creativity and (when necessary) discipline. Drafts were also presented and discussed both at âsum Forumâ receiving helpful feedback and at sum Research School. My research was carried out as part of the âRural Transformationsâ research group under the uniquely inspiring, generous leadership of Mariel Aguilar-Støen. Arve Hansen also deserves special mention for collaborating with me on our increasingly ambitious âmeatification projectâ, insights from which have been integrated in the present book.
Outside of sum, I have benefitted from presentations and discussions at various conferences and panels, while parts of the book are also based on papers that were published in peer reviewed journals. I am grateful to everyone who has been involved in providing constructive â sometimes ruthlessly so â feedback at various stages, fulfilling the strenuous and largely unpaid labour that academia is too full of and without which everything falls apart. Moreover, my thinking about this writing project has benefitted especially from stellar inputs
Special thanks also go to Jens Lerche, Nikita Sud, and Kristian Stokke for extremely insightful and challenging commentary on the PhD dissertation, on the basis of which this book has been written. Your inputs were indispensable to taking the project further into a book manuscript, and for that I am enormously grateful.
Lastly, I am grateful to David Fasenfest and Brill for competent editorial guidance on this book project, something that cannot possibly be underestimated.
Without wanting to sound overly sentimental, family is everything. I would like to thank my parents, Jorunn Jakobsen and Kristian Evensen, for always believing in me. To Ingfrid, Embla and Jo â the three of you mean the world to me. Without your endless care, none of the work over the years that has gone into this book would have been possible.