ABSTRACT
Chapters 12 and 13 discuss the influence of the development projects around Perar. Since the 1980s, a series of such projects have greatly affected the lives of villagers through their large-scale land acquisition and destruction of fields and villages. In Chapter 12, I consider the ambivalent influence of the būtas, who both strongly support antidevelopment activism by ordering a ‘desperate defence of land and shrine’ and, at the same time, bind people to their land. I first provide an overview of the features of the development projects and their general effects on local communities. I then examine the antidevelopment movement, which achieved the partial withdrawal of the development projects, focusing especially on the relationships between landlords and former tenants. Lastly, I examine the complicated relations among the people, deities, and land and nature that have emerged through the encroachment of the development projects. In so doing, I also look into the transformation of power relations in the local community, with an emphasis on the ongoing disputes over land acquisition.
