This book considers three questions about understanding the past. How can we rethink human histories by including animals and plants? How can we overcome nationally territorialised narratives? And how can we balance academic history-writing and indigenous understandings of history? This is a tentative foray into the connections between these questions. Entangled Lives explore them for a large area that has seldom been explored in academic inquiry. The 'Eastern Himalayan Triangle' includes both uplands and lowlands. The region is the meeting point of three global biodiversity hotspots connecting India and China across Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The 'Triangle' is treated as a multispecies site in which human histories have always been utterly intertwined with plant and animal histories. It foregrounds that history is co-created – it is always interspecies history – but that its contours are locally specific.
Author(s): Joy L. K. Pachuau, Willem van Schendel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 378
City: Cambridge
Cover
Entangled Lives
Title
Copyright
Contents
Maps and Plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction
More-than-human histories
Nationally territorialised narratives
Academic history-writing and indigenous understandings of the past
Terminology
A three-part book
Part I Tthe Deep Past
1 An Epic Crash
An experimental space: The Triangle
Ecologies
2 Human Beginnings
Niches
The Triangle in history
3 Changing the Environment
Domestication
Exploiting plants
Rice
Bamboo
Exploiting animals
The mithun
Long-distance connections
Long-term human history
4 Livelihoods
High-altitude life: Transhumance
Mountainside life: Shifting cultivation
Valley life: Fixed-field cultivation
Part II CosmologiIes
5 Stories of Human Origins
Triangle stories as historical sources
Cultural variety
Oral narratives
The creation of the world
Natural phenomena
Human origins
Death and the afterlife
Human mobilities
Tentative patterns
Cosmological commonalities
Cosmological centres
Triangle understandings of deep history
6 Human–Animal Histories
Animals as kin
Animal power
Animals: Wild and domestic
Hunted animals
The hunter-hero
Hunting and gender
Eating wild animals
Displaying wild animals
Wild animals and human inequality
Domestic animals
Animal exchange and trade
Animals as sacrifice
Animal sacrifice and different religious traditions
Human–animal interactions
7 Human–Plant Histories
Origin stories and plants
Sacred groves
Ceremonial plants
Medicinal plants
Companion plants
Poisonous plants
Agricultural crops
Cultivating a mountain field
The meanings of bamboo
Enduring staple crops
Plants clothing human bodies
Gendering plants
Human–plant interactions
Part III More-Tthan-Hhuman HhiIstoriIes
8 Cultural Geographies
‘Civilisation’
Microbes, enzymes and cultures
Dairy
Fermentation
Pathogens
Plant geographies
Bamboo
Rice
Textile plants
Animal geographies
Sea snails
Hornbills
Mithuns
Animal symbols of self-identification
Interspecies labour relations
The dynamism of spatial imaginations
9 Exploiting Natural Resources
Foraging undomesticated plants and animals
Resources from the earth’s surface and below
Mud
Quarrying and mining
Semi-precious stones
Fossil fuels: Coal, oil and gas
The limits of exploitation
10 Dealing with Environmental Decay
Human-aided species migration
Environmental awareness
Exploring wildlife
Scientific forestry
Vertical conservation
Wildlife sanctuaries
The tragedy of the Triangle’s commons
Environmental subjectivities
11 The Elephant Strikes Back
Zoonotic diseases
Uncontrollable invasive species
Animal attacks
Animals destroying human property
Human resentment against protected animals
Multispecies encounters
Conclusion
Copyrights and Sources
Plate
Bibliography
Index
