ISSN-0972-9445
Emerging Trends in Development Research
Vol. 33, No. 1 & 2, 2026, 51-61
Exploring Business and Community: A Study of Business Entrepreneurs in Mokokchung Town
Suraj Beri
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Nagaland University, Lumami, Nagaland, India
E-mail: sunwillb@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper uses the case of Mokokchung, the Ao Naga commercial and administrative centre in Nagaland, to argue that indigenous enterprise in Northeast India is best read not primarily as an act of cultural assertion but as a structural improvisation: an economy in which clan, church and associational institutions have been pressed into service as functional substitutes for the collateral, credit and regulatory infrastructure that the state and the market have failed to supply. Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and five with office-bearers of the Mokokchung Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI), conducted between September 2024 and September 2025, alongside documentary and press sources, the paper develops a capital-substitution model of embedded enterprise that extends Bourdieu’s theory of capital conversion and Granovetter’s embeddedness thesis through recent economic-sociological work on uncertainty, kinship and indigenous entrepreneurship. The paper reflects on treating social institutions as substitute infrastructure, rather than as cultural dimension, as it better explains both the resilience and the narrow ceiling of tribal micro-enterprise in Northeast India.
Keywords: business enterpreneurs, M. Granovetter, norteast India
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