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The Gaddi of North India are agro-pastoralists who rear sheep and goats following a seasonal migration around the first Himalayan range. While studies on pastoralists have focused either on the pastoralists' adaptation to their physical environment or treated the environment from a symbolic perspective, this book offers a new, holistic perspective that analyzes the ways in which people "make" place. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book not only describes a contemporary understanding of the Gaddi's engagement with the environment but also analyzes religious practices and performances of social relations, as well as media practices and notions of aesthetics. Thereby, the landscape in which the Gaddi live is understood as a network of places that is constantly being built and rebuilt through these local practices. The book contributes to the growing interest in approaches of practice within environmental anthropology.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Note on transliteration and spelling
Abbreviations
Introduction Chapter 1. The study of environment reconsidered
Rethinking nature and society - toward an anthropology of environment
Between adaptation and ideology: Himalayan pastoralism in the literature
Chapter 2. The Gaddi in images
Popular imagery
Ethnographic representations
Evaluation of popular representations
Chapter 3. A sheep for Shiva
Living like Siv-ji - Shiva and Gaddi identity
A sheep for Shiva - the nuala ritual
Identity and performative creation of community
Chapter 4. Doing kinship, doing place
Seasonal migration and ancestral villages
Belonging to multiple places
Ancestral villages and family deities
Kinship and the inside space
How children do kinship and plac
Kinship, place and habitus
Extending networks, accessing new territory
The landscape of the Dhauladhar - from metaphor to practice
Excursus: Walking
Chapter 5. Visiting the deities, enacting the mountains
"Gaddi deities"
"To go with a goat" - jagraand jatar
Gune Mata and Banni Mata
Enacting environment through movements
High altitude lakes, nag deities and the practice of nhaü
Power of place - performing altitude
Chapter 6. Environment and the body - understanding "water change"
The phenomenon of "water change"
On the connection between person and place in India
Ethnographic findings: The concept of adat
Getting attuned to place
Water as a vehicle
Chapter 7. Cool water, short green grass and fir trees - the aesthetics of environment
The aesthetics of environment
"Good" places - the mountains revisited
Environmental aesthetics in photographic motifs
What is in a picture? Photography as socially defined practice
Gaddi photography collections
On the meaning of short green grass and fir trees
Conclusion: Doing place Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography
About the author
Anja Wagner is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Münster. She received her doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of Heidelberg, and her studies have been supported by a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. She is the vice-spokesperson of the Himalayan studies group of the German Anthropological Association.
Summary
The Gaddi of North India are agro-pastoralists who rear sheep and goats following a seasonal migration around the first Himalayan range. While studies on pastoralists have focused either on the pastoralists’ adaptation to their physical environment or treated the environment from a symbolic perspective, this book offers a new, holistic perspective that analyzes the ways in which people “make” place. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book not only describes a contemporary understanding of the Gaddi’s engagement with the environment but also analyzes religious practices and performances of social relations, as well as media practices and notions of aesthetics. Thereby, the landscape in which the Gaddi live is understood as a network of places that is constantly being built and rebuilt through these local practices. The book contributes to the growing interest in approaches of practice within environmental anthropology.
Additional text
“This book is an excellent read for those wishing to acquaint themselves with how human–environment relationships are constructed on the ground in the non- Western world. It offers an analytical foundation to probe practical activities and sensory perceptions incisively and empirically.” · Anthropological Forum
“Accompanied by Latour, Ingold and Descola, Wagner takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the social and religious landscapes as seen by the Gaddi people of Himachal Pradesh. Linking kinship to photography, Shiva worship to para-gliding, music videos to pilgrimage, Wagner departs from clichés and stereotypes to reveal a picture of contemporary Gaddi life that moves beyond their customary occupation as nomadic herders of sheep and goats.” · Richard Axelby, SOAS, London University
