Tribal Communities & Development: The Global-Local Nexus

Contemporary crises such as climate change, displacement, conflict, and uneven development have intensified the entanglement between local tribal worlds and global processes. Yet tribal and indigenous communities are not merely passive recipients of these transformations; they actively negotiate, reinterpret, resist, and reshape development trajectories through everyday practices, collective mobilisations and knowledge production. This session invites sociological engagements with tribal societies as dynamic sites where local histories intersect with global forces. Moving beyond narratives of isolation, vulnerability, and cultural loss, the session foregrounds tribal communities as producers of alternative futures and critical perspectives on sustainability, governance, rights, and social justice. The session explores how tribal experiences illuminate broader questions of global sociology. How do Indigenous epistemologies challenge dominant models of modernity and progress? How do tribal communities mediate the pressures of global capitalism and development? What sociological insights emerge when tribal knowledge systems are treated as theory rather than merely empirical cases? How can development be reimagined through Indigenous ecological ethics? Bringing together perspectives from sociology, development studies, tribal studies, Indigenous studies, environmental sociology etc the session seeks to advance a more plural and dialogic understanding of local–global relations. Indicative themes may include: Tribal societies and the sociology of globalisation; Extractivism, mining, infrastructure, and environmental justice; Climate change, ecological transitions, and Indigenous adaptation; Development-induced displacement and social transformation; Indigenous/tribal knowledge systems and alternative development paradigms; Decolonising sociology through tribal epistemologies; Tribal identities, migration, and translocal belonging; Gender, intersectionality, and changing tribal livelihoods etc.