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- Convenors:
-
Mark Harris
(Monash University)
Nádia Farage (University of Campinas)
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- Stream:
- Evidence
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How did colonial administrations conceive of responsibility in the context of Southern colonial histories? How did the colonised conceive of the world that sustained them? By focusing on responsibility towards other species and environment, our ambition is to encompass dissident and critical voices.
Long Abstract:
The colonial histories of animals, plants and other forms of life remains an incipient area of research in historical anthropology. Indeed, the historical anthropology that has flourished since the 1980s has been successfully devoted to the struggles of socio-diversity, especially in the colonial histories of the South. Biodiversity has not received the same level of attention. As a rule, biodiversity was treated as "landscape" in historical narratives, the passive background against which the tragedy of colonial history had taken place. Nevertheless, recent studies are challenging the trend and pointing out that histories of biodiversity, species loss and environmental degradation, are tied up with the loss of sociodiversity, and are interwoven with the histories of colonial exploitation. This panel invites researchers seeking to revise Southern colonial histories in order to highlight the relevance of other species and/or inter-species relationships in the colonial process. How did colonial administration conceive of responsibility? How did the colonised conceive of theirs and the world which sustained them? Furthermore, focusing responsibility towards other species and environment, our will debate encompass critical and dissident voices. In particular, we would like to focus on the limits of evidence in answering these questions. What kinds of evidence are being used? Assessing environmental histories and the specific contribution anthropology can bring to such a review, the panel will welcome case studies of species' resistances or alliances which altered, if only for a brief time/space, the course of exploitation - be they flowing rivers, impenetrable forests, flies or uncontrollable wildlife.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses interspecies solidarity, taking up the case of cattle and the Macoushi, a Carib-speaking people on the Guianese shield. In delineating a gradient of social distance toward the bovines, it intends to question Macoushi conceptualization of cattle’s autonomy and non-ownership.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses interspecies solidarity, taking up the case of cattle and the Macoushi, a Carib-speaking people on the Guianese shield, Brasil/Guiana border. The Macoushi has been raising cattle for more than two centuries, since cattle was introduced by Portuguese colonizers in the end of 18thcentury. This is an extensive cattle-raising, which follows not only seasons, but also social mobility. The presence of cattle was also a powerful tool in the struggle for land, besides its land degradation and biodiversity loss. At first glance, this pattern of human-animal relationships can be said to be present in all pastorialist peoples. However, this paper seeks to explore the peculiar sociality that emerges from such interspecies relationship, in particular the gradient of social distance and how it affects Macoushi conceptualization of cattle’s autonomy and non-ownership.
Paper short abstract:
How have colonial accounts natural heritages in India influences the postcolonial discourses of heritage preservation and what are its impacts on the relationship of the native tribal populations and the forests?
Paper long abstract:
While there is an anthropological space of responsibility to hold the autocratic forest regimes accountable, this involves considerable challenges, such as the conflict between universal and particularist interpretations and claims to non-human heritages. The paper will compare the works of native anthropologists' claims on native indigenous rights with those from scholars trained in Western anthropological traditions to show how the latter anthropologists' own assumptions of responsibility to universal heritage ecologies were in direct conflict with ethnographic aspects of Gonds' own indigenous notions of forests. Historical archives and oral histories reflect the authentic indigenous ontologies of nature. The paper shows disjunctures between the discourses of colonial administeted knolwdge productions and the local and regional level indigenous struggles of rights and identities. Here, native refers to indigenous people, the Gonds, one of India's largest indigenous population. Their cultural heritage and preservation has been paralysed by autocratic forest conservation efforts coupled with a weak welfare state. Ironically, nothing has changed since colonial times for the Gonds and even today they are deemed as backward by the postcolonial forest authorities. As an ethical consequence, the Gonds are slowly losing their lands, and, therefore their indigenous identity. Their indigenous knowledge of conservation and forest management has been replaced by a secular and modern discourse of a joint forest-management system since more than a century.
Paper short abstract:
In this talk, I explore transformations in pigeons’ status in South Asia from a symbol of love and peace to an instrument for espionage and argue that European colonizers’ usage of pigeons in WWI and WWII have influenced the post-colonial status of the bird in the Indian subcontinent.
Paper long abstract:
Recently in India, some Pakistani pigeons have been detained as potential spies. In this talk, I trace the history of transformations in pigeons’ status in South Asia—from a bird of peace, a carrier of messages, a companion for play, an actor for expressing love, to a war animal blamed for espionage and for carrying “undercover” secretive missions. While exploring these transformations, I contend that a post-colonial discourse of “spy pigeons” in South Asia has emerged through a prolonged history of European colonial interaction with the bird, as evident through the pigeon’s usage in WWI and WWII. I conclude by showing how against this backdrop of “spy pigeons,” there is an emerging resistance in India and Pakistan that seeks to re-establish the bird’s status as an animal of love and play. This talk is based on mix-method approach involving ethnography, analysis of historical achieves, and a close examination of textual material including colonial and contemporary Urdu literature.