Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal

Campbell, Ben

Abstract

Successive policy agendas in Nepal have mobilised the notion of the natural environment through crisis scenarios of deforestation and soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and latterly climate change. This article discusses ethnographic work on struggles over livelihoods and national park regulations, and examines collisions and collusions of indigenous shamanic ontologies, moral ecologies, and a hierarchical state symbolism of hunting, to tell very different storylines about languages of nature slipping into affinity with communicative orders of hierarchical purity and power distinctions. Protected areas for nature and wildlife are established in ethnically marked territories, perceived by elites as places of jangal, lacking in culture. Ethnographic research in the Langtang National Park reveals that no singular hegemonic order or ontology dominates but dialogues of power, knowledge, and relational possibility come into play. The aftermath of 2015s earthquakes notably occasioned appeals for social justice to bend the singularly proprietorial resource language of nature protection authorities.

Citation

Campbell, B. (2020). Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal. Ethnos, 85(1), 79-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1574854

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 11, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 24, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Jan 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 24, 2020
• Journal: Ethnos
• Print ISSN: 0014-1844
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-588X
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 85
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 79-99
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1574854
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1339739