April 29, 2022
Online at 10am PDT
With Prof. Karine Gagné (University of Guelph)
The region of Zanskar in the Indian Himalayas has recently seen several locust invasions which have compounded steep challenged to agriculturalists. This presentation examines a multispecies connection that developed in a moment of mutual vulnerability. Amid an ever more vulnerable agrarian ecology challenged by anthropocentric rationalities, the locust emerged as a politically and morally charged creature. Against state policies, local farmers have adopted a politic of cohabitation that amounts to a world-making practice that aims to change ways of relating to nonhuman others.
Karine Gagné is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Guelph, Canada. She is the author of Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas.
Public Religion & Environment in Inner Asia: 2021-22 University of California Riverside’s Critical Asian Humanities Speaker Series
Sponsored by Asian Studies, the Center for Ideas & Society, Department of Religious Studies, & Department of Environment, Sustainability and Health Equity