Sociological understanding of risks: an empirical case study of Tipaimukh dam in Manipur, India

This paper attempts to explore theory-empiric linkages of risk, technology, society, and environment movement by selecting a case study of Tipaimukh dam in Manipur. It begins with certain research questions: What is the theoretical understanding of 'risk' in the empirical domain of Tipaimukh dam? What is the significance of Beck's 'sub-politics' for understanding the environmental movement of Tipaimukh dam? How do the stakeholders of the dam show their own interest and negotiate each other? The concept of 'risk' coined by Beck is introduced to study the risk perspective of the dam. Beck's 'sub-politics' has been adopted for analysing the environmental movements of the dam. The present work uses an inductive approach which is qualitative in nature to generate a new theoretical insight of the dam. It concludes that a theoretical understanding of the empirical case of Tipaimukh dam is significant to understand the linkages of technology, society, and environmental movement.