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This paper explores the ways in which social order is fabricated through provision of collective property rights. It focuses on the labor regimes and land-use practices of indigenous peoples in Venezuela's Andean highlands on the western frontier.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which social order is fabricated through the provision of collective property. Taking as its object the struggle for indigenous land rights in the sierra of Perijá, a mountainous frontier in western Venezuela, it investigates the co-production of ethnicity and sovereignty as well as how the efforts of Venezuela’s government to settle longstanding land claims and provide development aid to indigenous communities have resulted in a re-demarcation of the ethnic and territorial boundaries of the nation. In step with Article 119 of the Venezuelan constitution, which recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to traditional forms of land tenure, the Ministry of Agriculture has returned portions of former ancestral range to Andean indigenous communities. It has also provided technical assistance targeted at increasing agricultural productivity and preserving biodiversity in a national park which is Venezuela’s only UNESCO world heritage site. But while Venezuelan leaders laud indigenous peoples as a force for revitalizing the nation and its ecologies, my fieldwork in Perijá shows that their interventions negate the sovereignty of indigenous peoples over land and that the modes of labour which emerge alongside official cultural recognition inadvertently produce new forms of social exclusion and environmental degradation.

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This paper examines how a Chinese village was transformed to be a technical end of an infrastructure, incorporating water projects, local bureaucrats, and villagers. Local uneven weather patterns are folded into the state's developmental agendas.

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This paper examines the interaction between a Chinese village and an extensive flood-control infrastructure situated in the Dongting basin, the middle section of Yangtze River in China. The village, which I pseudonymized as Hecun, is located along the border between the Dongting water network and a significant mountain range.

Firstly, I examine how the state scientifically identifies the upstream and middle stream’s weather patterns in the Yangtze area, i.e., the heavy storms, as the primary cause of flooding in the Dongting basin. Hecun is administratively and scientifically confined to flood-prone areas within the basin. A flood-control infrastructure is committed to address these weather-water issues. Secondly, I show that Hecun’s primary farming activity, rice cultivation, is primarily affected by droughts rather than floods. The specific geographical location of Hecun, being closer to the mountain range, accounts for this. But structurally, Hecun has significantly been involved in and works as a technical endpoint of the flood-control infrastructure system, incorporating water projects, local bureaucrats, and villagers. I argue that in this mountain-water borderland, local uneven weather patterns are folded into the state's macro-political and economic agendas and rendered invisible. Hecun villagers had to devise their own strategies to cope with the environmental challenges.

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The paper shows how three resident indigenous communities of Kangchenjunga mountain range have adapted to the eco-system allowing it to shape their culture/ social structure. This rendered the ecosystem sustainable.

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This paper articulates the historic process of adaptation of three indigenous communities residing in the mountainous ecosystem of Kangchenjunga range. These communities, namely the Lepchas, the Bhutias and the Limbus, have been believers of Nyingmapa subsect a fusion of Tibetan Buddhism & Naturism. It claims that the soci-cultural lives of these communities are organized around the Kangchenjunga mountain eco-system and hence, with ethnographic data, points out its embedded culture as well as an engraved social structure. This nature centricity of adaptation of the communities, is articulated through their, (i) flaunted identity, (ii) embedded culture (eco-cosmology) and (iii) engraved social structure (Stratification system). Having lived in the fragile eco-system for over 700 years, the communities have maintained the eco-system through their culturally inbuilt nature conservation practices and protection mechanisms. This gentle interaction with nature is guided by their belief system. Hence it is argued that their belief system: Nyingmapa sub-sect, founded on reverence to the sacred mountain has shaped their culture and social structure. Thus nature shaped the communities’ embedded culture/ structure, historically, instead of getting shaped by the communities’ sustenance efforts. Their subtler sustenance efforts do not disturb their organic link with nature.

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This paper presents ethnographic fieldwork exploring how climate change induced snow loss disrupts the alpine water cycle that traditional livestock farming in Switzerland depends on. It highlights farmers' resilience and the need for integrating indigenous knowledge of the mountains into policy.

Paper Abstract:

The implications of climate change on alpine landscapes, rapidly warming temperatures and unpredictable precipitation, have been prominently discussed globally, with Switzerland at the forefront. In this paper, I present ethnographic fieldwork with Swiss farmers focussing on the impacts of snow disappearing from alpine agriculture. While the implications of snow disappearing from tourism and winter sport have been widely discussed, the implications of a lack of snow in alpine livestock farming have yet to be foregrounded. Snow is crucial not only as a winter surface but as water storage that sustains the vertical mountainous landscape all year-round. The increasing absence and unpredictability of snow disrupt traditional three-stage farming practices, in which livestock are moved up the mountain along the snow line. These altered water cycles render parts of the landscape unproductive. I discuss Swiss farmers’ resilience to hostile weather conditions, adaptation strategies to changing landscapes, and future imaginaries of agriculture after snow. Finally, I address the challenges alpine farmers face in competition for water with winter tourism and the hydro-energy sector, which generates nearly 60% of Swiss energy. The paper highlights the importance of integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and landscape understanding into political dialogues to address the impacts of climate change and develop strategies that support all stakeholders in the alpine region.