Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya

Book excerpt: This book is concerned with human-environment relations in the Himalaya. It explores how different populations and communities in the region understand or conceive of the concept of environment, how their concepts vary across lines of gender, class, age, status, and what this implies for policy makers in the fields of environmental conservation and development. The chapters in this book analyse the symbolic schema that shape human-environment relations, whether that of scientists studying the Himalayan environment, public officials crafting policy about it, or people making a living from their engagement with it, and the way that natural phenomena themselves shape human perception of the world. A new approach to the study of the environment in South Asia, this book introduces the new thinking in environmental anthropology and geography into the study of the Himalaya and uses Himalayan ethnography to interrogate and critique contemporary theorizing about the environment.