Contribution short abstract

We integrated ethnographic and ecological methods (like camera traps and satellite telemetry) to examine the interplay of human actors, nonhuman actors (elephants), and inanimate materials like haria (rice beer) and electric fences in shaping human-elephant conflict in North Bengal, India.

Contribution long abstract

Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is co-produced through a dynamic interplay between human actors, nonhuman actors, and inanimate materials like haria (rice beer) and electric fences. We deploy a more-than-human political ecology framework that uses a mixed-methods approach, which combines ethnographic findings with ecological data through camera traps and satellite telemetry. The combination of methods allows a nuanced understanding of how both humans and elephants perceive each other and navigate the shared landscape for better resources and survival. Elephants, through their increased state protection, emerge as political animals under the contemporary conservation regime, wherein they adapt to ‘weak’ retaliation by humans and modify local agricultural practices—behaviors reflecting interspecies cultural learning, adaptive intelligence, and political awareness.

Haria emerges as ‘less illegal’ than timber felling and remains a key livelihood option among the indigenous communities. However, as an actant, it acts as a double-edged catalyst, both attracting elephants and rendering intoxicated humans more vulnerable to HEC. Electric fences remain the most preferred technical intervention to mitigate HEC. Regression analysis shows that electric fences reduce the elephant-induced costs locally by 32% but also create a spillover effect of increased cost in the neighboring unfenced (40%) and weak-fenced (37%) villages.

Overall, this research calls for not only mitigating HEC but also transforming the conditions under which it prevails. This can be achieved by bringing together and recognizing the political lives of elephants, the cultural politics of haria, and the contested consequences of electric fences, instead of separating them through disciplinary, methodological, and political boundaries.