ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the book’s specific location in Assam, one of India’s eight northeastern states. It also establishes why Assam particularly lends itself to a gendered study of multilayered operations of power in geopolitical peripheries. Nestled between South, East, and Southeast Asia, and part of the Asian “arc of instability,” addressing conflicts in Assam – and its adjoining/sister “geographies of ignorance” – is crucial to finding peace in the entire transnational region. Assam is the perfect illustration of how power functions in societies when varying levels of patriarchal control collide. Marginality is a relational concept, and margins are places of immense possibilities: Assam is a textbook case for studying shifting margins, power, positionality, and possibilities of peace. A gendered study of the multilayered operations of (and negotiations with) power in Assam can help uncover pathways to engendered, organic peace among marginalized and conflict-habituated peoples globally.
