Smadja, Joëlle (éd.) 2013. Territorial changes and territorial restructurings in the Himalayas. Delhi, Adroit Publishers, 353 p.
What are the characteristics and consequences of current territorial changes and restructurings in the Himalayan region and do they contribute to making this region a specific entity ? These are the questions addressed in this book by Indian, Nepalese and European scholars. Anthropologists, geographers or historians,they are specialists of the area and with this book make an original contribution to Himalayan studies. They use the notion of territory in a broad way including its political, administrative and economic aspects as well as its cultural and symbolic ones, and they pinpoint the long and complex process of territory-making on various scales.
In the first part, the book focuses on current territory-making in the light of legacies,chiefly on claims to territories based on ethnicity and on indigeneity. The authors explain how some of these claims find their roots in policies implemented at the time of British rule. They highlight the ambiguities in the various claims and the difficulties in implementing them.
The second part of the book deals with territories of modernity, territories of exclusion. On the one hand, it addresses the emergence of new territories associated with development programmes and shows the difference between various conceptions of territory and of resources. On the other hand, it is devoted to the way migrants, displaced people, and new settlers make new territories and forge bonds with them.
Introduction : Legacies and Current Trends : Characteristics of Territory-Making in the Himalayan Region
Joëlle Smadja
PART ONE. CLAIMS TO TERRITORIES AND ROLE OF LEGACIES IN TERRITORY-MAKING
I. 1. Claims to Territories in the Western and Eastern Himalayas
Boundary-Making and Border Practices in Northern Pakistan
Hermann Kreutzmann
Politics of Territoriality : Indigeneity, Itinerancy and Rights in North-East India
Sanjib Baruah
Margins and Borders : Polities and Ethnicities in North-East India
Philippe Ramirez
I. 2. Federalism and Ethnic Territories in Nepal
Territorial Changes in Nepal : Proposals for a Federal State
Narendra Raj Khanal
Tamuwan in the Gurung Imagination
Krishna Hachhethu
Cultural Territoriality in the Context of Modern Nepal : Some Examples from the Adivasi /Janajati and Madhesi Groups
Dilli Ram Dahal
I. 3. Village-Community Roots of Territory-Making
From the ‘Borders of the Country’ to the ‘Special District’ : the Vicissitudes of Kham-Magar History
Anne de Sales
Rai Villages as Ritual Entities, and the Making of an Ethnic Festival
Martin Gaenszle
Defining Community : A Historical Study of Territory and Transformation in the Western Himalaya
Chetan Singh
PART TWO. TERRITORIES OF MODERNITY, TERRITORIES OF EXCLUSION
II. 1. Development Programmes and Emergence of New Territories
How Environmental Policies Reshape the Himalayan Area. New Environmental Territories, New Environmental Borders ; the Example of Kaziranga National Park (Assam)
Joëlle Smadja
Nature Reserves, National Politics and Local Resistance:Why the Lepchas from the Dzongu Reserve in Sikkim starve themselves to death for their motherland
Brigitte Steinmann
From Remote Area to Thoroughfare of Globalisation : Shifting Territorialisations of Development and Border Peasantry in Nepal
Ben Campbell
II. 2. Migrants, New Settlers and Bonds to Territory
Redefining Belonging and Bonds to Territory : Multiple Forms of Mobility and Itineraries among the Tamangs of Central Nepal
Blandine Ripert
Urban Fringes : Squatter and Slum Settlements in the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal)
Gérard Toffin
From a Green Happy Homeland to a Cramped ‘Island’ : Discussing the Territories of a Nomadic Group Inhabiting the South-Eastern Edge of Ladakh
Pascale Dollfus
From Home to Abroad, and Back Again : The Expanding Territories of Nepalese Migrants
Tristan Bruslé