The Gaddi Beyond Pastoralism: Making Place in the Indian Himalayas

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.

Author: Anja Wagner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 06/01/2013
Pages: 214
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9780857459299

About the Author
Wagner, Anja: -

Anja Wagner is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Münster. She received her doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of Heidelberg, and her studies have been supported by a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. She is the vice-spokesperson of the Himalayan studies group of the German Anthropological Association.