Presentation short abstract

We examine social roots of vulnerability to understand farmers' experience, struggle and response to wildlife problem. We find that farmers’ differential experience and struggle to the problem has reshaped traditional social relations and local responses that is creating new sociocultural relations.

Presentation long abstract

Socio-economic and ecological changes are driving new human- wildlife relations in the Himalaya. Certain wildlife are growing in numbers due to some farmers abandoning farmland that is creating new habitats. Others are suffering from wild animals, particularly the monkeys, raiding crops. The problem has now turned into an agrarian crisis which is reproducing vulnerability and inequality among smallholder farmers. We explore social roots of vulnerability to wildlife problems to understand differential experience, struggle and response of different social groups and ways to adapt with the crisis. We draw on Bourdieu’s ‘field of practice’ to examine how rural farmers’ exposure and responses are socio-politically shaped and how new socio-cultural relations emerge. We draw on ethnographic enquiries such as life stories of rural farmers across caste, class and gender-based groups, landscape reading, participant observation and in-depth interviews in the study areas. We argue that the farmer’s differential experience and struggle to deal with wildlife problem has reshaped the traditional social relations based on castes and classes. For instance, households with large parcel(s) of land and off-farm incomes suffer less than the households with smaller land parcels. While economically well-off farmers with disposable income afford to leave some of their land fallow or migrate altogether whereas people with smaller land bear the brunt of it. Some households have also adapted to new cultural practices which were not socially accepted in the past. We argue that vulnerability to wildlife damage is socio-politically produced and local responses often reproduces new socio-cultural relations and inequalities.