Nikita Simpson (SOAS): How do we theorise ecological distress? A view from the Western Himalayas
| Dates: | 27 January 2025 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Nikita Simpson |
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The Gaddi tribal community, who inhabit the foothills of India’s Dhaula Dhar range, have experienced a rapid shift in livelihood over the last century from agro-pastoralism to waged labour, driven by urbanisation, land enclosure, ecological destruction, and climate change. This shift in livelihood has destabilised Gaddi dharam – or the moral way of life – overturning hierarchies of social status within the tribe-caste-class nexus and rupturing generational expectations of masculinity. Many men experience this instability as embodied and psychic distress that, in some instances, tips over into ‘madness’ (pagalpan). This paper considers the extent to which this ethnographic instance of distress might speak to and trouble the growing paradigm of studies on ‘eco-anxiety’, revealing persistent and problematic assumptions about the way in which distinctions of ‘mind’ and body’; ‘inside’ and ‘outside’; ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ figure in expressions of ecological distress, particularly for indigenous groups. Instead of reproducing these assumptions, it delves into the biomoral world of the Gaddi people and investigates the stymied vitalities that might generate distress for Gaddi men.
Speaker
Nikita Simpson
Organisation: SOAS
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Room 5.205
University Place
Manchester
