Paper short abstract:

Recent governmental ban on worshipping local deities and removing ancient bricks for treatment of diabetes at Khar Khul Khaan has led to the problem of exclusionary care. The controversy exposes the role of situated human experiences and values in mediating cosmologically ‘dense’ natural landmarks.

Paper long abstract:

While the (re-)construction of traditional medicine in Mongolia over the past three decades has been praised by international organizations and variously supported by members of the Mongolian general public, the surge in diabetes and circulation of Tibetan medical texts detailing its treatment by ingestion of ‘ancient’ brick have led to the destruction of Khar Khul Khaan, an under-researched archaeological site. Recent governmental protection has curbed the removal of bricks and forbid worship of the local spirit owner by the ‘customary’ means of offering milk, white foodstuffs, and scarves, cast as ‘pollution’.

This paper explores the new inequalities that emerge as Khar Khul Khaan – a cosmologically ‘dense’ entity – is converted from medical to historical resource. While both natural heritage conservation and caring for one’s health operate by the biopolitical logics of ‘intervening to keep alive’, the tension between them exposes a hierarchy of values variously enacted by different actors. While nearby residents primarily valued conservation, brick-seeking visitors predominantly considered medical concerns, the twin tendencies to exploit and protect the environment reminiscent of environmental subjectivities during the Soviet period (Bruno 2019).

For interlocutors, the controversy was not that the mandate denied existence of the spirit owner, but instead a politico-ethical concern: who is allowed to care for whom or what, and in what ways. In this case study, cosmology as ‘principles of order that support integrated forms of being’ (Schrempp 1992: ix-x) emerges not as immaterial backdrop ‘out there’, but as mediated by situated human experiences, values and practices.

Paper short abstract:

This talk attends to the (eco)logic and (cosmo)politics of PA conservation in Timorese customary land as self-reproducing and spatially expansionist. Furthermore, it does this in consideration of the varied flows of power and meaning invested in land that is disrupted by state displacement.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation attends to the (eco)logic and (cosmo)politics of protected area conservation in customary managed land as self-reproducing and spatially expansionist.Through political ecology and ontology frameworks I seek to articulate how certain conservation processes not only limit community control of high value bio-material, but temporally diminish it through translocation to sites of state exclusivity. This is done in consideration for multi-natural metabolisms and their ontological politics. I argue communities not only experience greater scarcity of bio-viable environments but also cosmological potency, which both manifest in biological, political and spiritual degradation. Inevitably the outcomes are ecological ruination in areas remaining under community control, and thereby rationalising further managerial intervention by the state. By examining this in Timor-Leste I argue that these material, discursive and ontological changes facilitate the reproduction and ongoing spatial expansion of protected area conservation.

Paper short abstract:

At the Bayazed Bostami shrine in Chittagong, we are studying how the interaction between a population of endangered turtles, shrine staff who look after the turtles, shop owners, and the pilgrims and tourists who feed the turtles creates an plural, open civic vision for the region.

Paper long abstract:

There are at least two Sufi shrines in Bangladesh that are known as refuges for endangered species. In this article we will focus on the Bayazid Bostami shrine in Nasirabad, north of Chittagong. This shrine, which has in recent years been enclosed by urban sprawl, has a large tank at the foot of the hill where the shrine is located. This tank is generally known by Bangladeshis to be the last refuge of the black soft-shelled turtle (Aspideretes nigricans). Visitors to the shrine buy packs of bread and other foods to feed to the turtles; shrine staff actively manage the population; and researchers from Chittagong University use it as a field site. The earliest zoological records from the 18th century suggest that A. nigricans was distributed across several tanks in the Chittagong area, but it is now only found in the Bayazid Bostami shrine tank. Recent studies have shown that there are, actually, remnant wild populations of the black soft-shelled turtle elsewhere in the Bengal delta. At the same time, development of the shrine has created challenges for the breeding cycle. In this study, we will focus on the work done by the shrine staff to support the turtles, and the symbolic work that the turtles have done as part of the shrine. We show that maintaining a successful economic and biological relationship around the shrine is understood to build a tolerant and plural civic vision for Chittagong--and that the turtles have, therefore, been attacked by fundamentalists.

Paper short abstract:

Contrary to the perception that Buddhism is a religion of moderation, Buddhist gentrification in Bhutan’s Bongo village has been detrimental to people’s historically sustainable livelihood practices conditioned by localised environmental conditions and their belief in powerful sovereign owners.

Paper long abstract:

Introduction of Buddhism, specifically its so-called monastic ‘cultural template’ (Ramble, 1993), has counterintuitively been detrimental to traditional livelihood practices that were conditioned by localised environmental conditions, and people’s conception of and their relations to numinous beings who held sovereignty over the landscape and all its human and non-human inhabitants. In Bongo where I conducted a year’s ethnographic fieldwork, traditionally livelihood practices were mainly based on herding of cattle and their movements between the homestead near the village centre and remote cattle stations in subtropical jungles of southern Bhutan. Indigenous belief in the power of unseen but powerful beings overseeing the rhythm and nature of people’s life meant that ‘herd management’ provided a sustainable “economic infrastructure for cultural beliefs and values” (Levine, 1999). However, a state supported Buddhist gentrification that has been likened to a ‘religious upgrading’ has resulted in the systematic dismantling of the indigenous and supposedly ‘backward’ animist beliefs. Through an ethnography of the herding practices of a traditional herdsman, my paper proposes to tell the story of how problematic, and essentially untenable, is the argument of the supposedly moderating effect of Buddhism when it is imposed on non-Buddhist communities under a Buddhist state. Buddhism can act as an unwitting agent of capitalist practices paving the path for the entrance of the latter in traditional village communities like Bongo, which have seen its socio-economic structures transformed from one in harmony with nature and its traditional sovereigns to one of modern market economy and a new Buddhist idolatry ritual culture.