“Autonomy for the Majority of the World! Community Struggles for Self-Governance in the Global South” | Shrishtee Bajapi

In many ways, then, the real challenge in times of ecological collapse, the rise of authoritarian governments, capitalist crisis, and war-mongering militarization is to truly understand these systems, their evolving nature in relation to contemporary societies, their potential interface with modern institutions of governance, and how to strengthen overall governance for the purposes of justice and sustainability. The dominant story we have been told is one of homogenized humans, scarcity, competition, hierarchies, the politics of fear, competition to accumulate capital through productivity, growth, and continued extractivist expansion. However, these autonomy-seeking communities are powerfully challenging this dominant worldview. “To achieve well-being, everyone needs to know what their responsibility is,” says Izamsai Katengey of the Gond indigenous community in central India. They are articulating different ways of being in the world that include sustaining the living landscapes, the territories we inhabit, and communal forms of economy and justice wherever we are.