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The Gaddi of North India are agro-pastoralists who rear sheep and goats following a seasonal migration around the first Himalayan range. While studies on pastoralists have focused either on the pastoralists’ adaptation to their physical environment or treated the environment from a symbolic perspective, this book offers a new, holistic perspective that analyzes the ways in which people “make” place. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book not only describes a contemporary understanding of the Gaddi’s engagement with the environment but also analyzes religious practices and performances of social relations, as well as media practices and notions of aesthetics. Thereby, the landscape in which the Gaddi live is understood as a network of places that is constantly being built and rebuilt through these local practices. The book contributes to the growing interest in approaches of practice within environmental anthropology.
“This book is an excellent read for those wishing to acquaint themselves with how human–environment relationships are constructed on the ground in the non- Western world. It offers an analytical foundation to probe practical activities and sensory perceptions incisively and empirically.” · Anthropological Forum
“Accompanied by Latour, Ingold and Descola, Wagner takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the social and religious landscapes as seen by the Gaddi people of Himachal Pradesh. Linking kinship to photography, Shiva worship to para-gliding, music videos to pilgrimage, Wagner departs from clichés and stereotypes to reveal a picture of contemporary Gaddi life that moves beyond their customary occupation as nomadic herders of sheep and goats.” · Richard Axelby, SOAS, London University
Acknowledgements
Note on transliteration and spelling
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. The study of environment reconsidered
- Rethinking nature and society – toward an anthropology of environment
- Between adaptation and ideology: Himalayan pastoralism in the literature
Chapter 2. The Gaddi in images
- Popular imagery
- Ethnographic representations
- Evaluation of popular representations
Chapter 3. A sheep for Shiva
- Living like Śiv-ji - Shiva and Gaddi identity
- A sheep for Shiva – the nuālā ritual
- Identity and performative creation of community
Chapter 4. Doing kinship, doing place
- Seasonal migration and ancestral villages
- Belonging to multiple places
- Ancestral villages and family deities
- Kinship and the inside space
- How children do kinship and plac
- Kinship, place and habitus
- Extending networks, accessing new territory
- The landscape of the Dhauladhar – from metaphor to practice
- Excursus: Walking
Chapter 5. Visiting the deities, enacting the mountains
- "Gaddi deities"
- "To go with a goat" – jāgrāand jātar
- Gūne Mātā and Bannī Mātā
- Enacting environment through movements
- High altitude lakes, nāg deities and the practice of nhauṇ
- Power of place – performing altitude
Chapter 6. Environment and the body – understanding "water change"
- The phenomenon of "water change"
- On the connection between person and place in India
- Ethnographic findings: The concept of ādat
- Getting attuned to place
- Water as a vehicle
Chapter 7. Cool water, short green grass and fir trees – the aesthetics of environment
- The aesthetics of environment
- "Good" places – the mountains revisited
- Environmental aesthetics in photographic motifs
- What is in a picture? Photography as socially defined practice
- Gaddi photography collections
- On the meaning of short green grass and fir trees
Conclusion: Doing place
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography