Perceptions of Climate Change from North India
An Ethnographic Account
Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research Series

Perceptions of Climate Change from North India: An Ethnographic Accountexplores local perceptions of climate change through ethnographic encounters with the men and women who live at the front line of climate change in the lower Himalayas.

From data collected over the course of a year in a small village in an eco-sensitive zone in North India, this book presents an ethnographic account of local responses to climate change, resource management and indigenous environmental knowledge. Aase Kvanneid?s observations cast light on the precarious reality of climate change in this region and bring to the fore issues such as access to water, NGO intervention and climate information for farmers. In doing so, she also explores classic topics in the study of rural India including ritual, gender, social hierarchy and political economy. Overall, this book shows how the cause and effect of climate change is perceived by those who have the most to lose and explores how the impact of climate change is being dealt with on a local and global scale.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the anthropology of climate change, environmental sociology and rural development.

Prologue

Introduction

Climate Change in India

A Scientifically Social Climate Change

Writing Climate Change

A Note on Methodology

A Choice of Words and How They Flow

References

Endnotes

Chapter 1: Climate Change Expressions

Social Principles of Differentiation in Rani Mājri

Class in Rani Mājri

Caste in Rani Mājri

Gender in Rani Mājri

References

Endnotes

Chapter 2: Waterworn

Becoming Rani Mājri: A Kuhl Story

Time Beyond Living Memory

Time Remembered

Contemporary Rani Mājri

Water-rights

Unirrigated Development

References

Endnotes

Chapter 3: Governing Awareness

On Global-Local Gaps and Frictions

Junctions

Junction 1: Governing Bodies

Junction 2: Governing Forest

Junction 3: Governing Soil and Water

Development Trajectories

A History of Management

Disconnected Development

References

Endnotes

Chapter 4: Divine Jurisdictions

Deciduous Land Management

Settled Deities

Placeless Beings

Auspicious Placemaking

Negotiating Village Territories

References

Endnotes

Chapter 5 Climate Identities

Being Climate Change Aware

Life in the "Greenery"

Deprived of Science, Bestowed with Eco-Sensitivity?

Climate Change as a Discourse

References

Endnotes

Chapter 6: A Dance of Global Warming

Environmental Retribution for the ‘Wrong’ Progress

On Reductionism and Disempowerment

Concluding Remarks

References

Endnotes

Aase J. Kvanneid is an anthropologist currently working as an associate professor of Global Development Studies at the University of Agder and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Oslo. Her main areas of research are the societal aspects of environmental and climate change, and she is currently researching the empirical embeddedness of sustainability and transcendental visions in Asia.