Contextualizing Critical Consciousness: Community Engagement and Cultural Practices among Adivasi Adults in Jharkhand, India

ABSTRACT The current study explores the voices and lived experiences of Jharkhand's (India) Adivasi (indigenous) adults to examine how critical consciousness was expressed through community engagement. Drawing on Freirean perspectives and contemporary scholarship, critical consciousness was opted to understand as comprising interconnected processes of critical reflection, agency, and action. While existing research had largely focused on youth in Western and urban contexts, less was known about how these processes unfold in Indigenous and non‐Western settings. Adivasi adults navigate complex socio‐political landscapes, challenging traditional boundaries and fostering a movement towards critical action. In the face of rapid urbanization, economic marginalization, and cultural disintegration, Adivasi adults emerged as vocal agents of change, confronting issues that threaten their identity, heritage, and rights. Using an ethnographic approach, this study includes participant observation, focus group discussions, and semi‐structured interviews with Adivasi adults aged 18–35. Findings highlight three interrelated processes through which participants engage with social change: recognition of structural marginalization, collective agency for social transformation, and sustainability through the integration of cultural knowledge and practices. These processes illustrated how awareness of injustice was translated into culturally grounded and community‐oriented forms of action. The study contributed to the literature by demonstrating that critical action in Adivasi contexts was deeply embedded in collective identities, cultural traditions, and ecological relationships. Rather than proposing a new theoretical model, the findings extend existing understandings of critical consciousness by illustrating how its core dimensions were expressed in Indigenous sociocultural settings and incorporated culturally grounded perspectives into research on social change.