Reimagining spaces, species and societies in the himalayas

 It explores the dynamic interplay between humans and non-humans in the Himalayas, emphasizing how state-making, development, and commercialization reshape these relationships.

Case Studies:

1. Landscape in the Limi Valley (Nepal/China border)


Pastoralists in Limi Valley used to move freely between Nepal and China with their animals. After the border closed, they lost access to their traditional grazing lands in China. Break kinship between herders and animals; before, they were viewed as family, but now as property. 

Government rules sometimes ignore local ways of caring for nature.


2. Darjeeling: "How colonial rules ruined forests"



British rulers in India saw forests as "empty land" and took control, ignoring the indigenous people who lived there sustainably. They banned practices like shifting cultivation. Local tribes knew how to live with nature, but their knowledge was erased. Modern conservation still sometimes ignores indigenous voices. Therefore, real environmental care should include the people who have lived in these places for centuries. 


3. Xishuangbanna (China): "When water becomes just a resource." 


The Dai people in Yunnan see water as a sacred part of their religion and farming. The Chinese government now controls water for big farms, treating it like a product and not something alive. When water is just a "resource," people lose their spiritual and cultural connection to it. Modern development often ignores the deeper meaning nature has for local communities. 


These stories have reshaped my understanding of development: real environmental justice must restore local voices, reinvigorate relational ecologies, and push against modern systems that treat beings and places as mere resources.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feminist and Indigenous Political Ecology

Image
Gender + Indigenous Knowledge + Power Dynamics in Agriculture and Food Security.   Feminist and Indigenous political ecology frameworks highlight the intricate connections between gender, indigenous knowledge, and agriculture and food security power dynamics.  In Bhutan, while women play a significant role in agriculture, t raditional patriarchal norms often marginalize their contributions and limit their access to resources and decision-making processes, and recognize them as unpaid labor.  Examples include limited access to agricultural inputs, credit, and land ownership.  Land rights struggles : It explores conflicts over indigenous territories where industrial agriculture often displaces native stewardship. Those indigenous communities often include women, who share an emotional connection with their native lands, displacing their culture, ecological practices, and land ownership.  Additionally, societal norms and religious beliefs can perpetuate the no...
Read more

Feminist Political ecology:(FPE)

Image
 FPE : An interdisciplinary framework examining how gender, environment, and power intersect. Origin : Since the 1990s, influenced by political ecology and feminist theory. Examples include: Global North (Western communities):  Analyzing climate activism in Europe about how women's role in climate policies is often neglected. Global South (Asia, India): Vandana Shiva's ecofeminism critiques corporate control of seeds, highlighting women's knowledge of traditional ecology. Key thinkers include:   Rocheleau Environmental knowledge and practices are gendered, shaped by individuals' community roles and interactions.  She advocates for integrating gender analysis into environmental research to understand the differentiated impacts of ecological changes on men and women.   Thomas Slayter  focuses on the political dimensions of resource access, highlighting how gendered power relations influence environmental decision-making.   She calls for critically exami...
Read more

Political Ecology

Image
This theory or approach primarily helps us understand the environment through the lens of social, economic, and, most importantly, political factors. It proposes that not all environmental change happens naturally; politics also shapes the environment by framing policies, deciding the distribution of resources, and controlling it.  Example: Waste: Political factors—rules of the state on the production of waste.                            Economics: Production of industrial waste with a capitalist motive.                            Social: Daily production of waste in households due to consumption.  Politics includes different power dynamics, which get to decide who owns what, what resources they get, and how much they should consume. In countries like Bhutan, resources like water for fieldwork are often distributed unequally; either a pers...
Read more