1st Edition
Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters
Woven together as a text of humanities-based environmental research outcomes, Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters hosts a collection of historical and fieldwork-based case studies and conceptual discussions of climate change in the greater Himalayan region.
The collective endeavour of the book is expressed in what the editors characterize as the clime studies of the Himalayan multispecies worlds. As a terrestrial concept, the individual case studies concretize the abstract concept of climate change in their place- and culturally-specific correlations of weather, climate pattern, and landscape change. Supported by empirical and historical findings, the concept in each chapter showcases climate change as clime change. As place, clime is discerned as both a recipient of and a contributor to climate change over time in the Himalayan context. It affirms climate change as multispecies encounters, as part of multifaceted cultural processes, and as ecologically-specific environmental changes in the more-than-human worlds of the Himalayas.
As the case studies complement, enrich, and converse with natural scientific understandings of Himalayan climate change, this book offers students, academics, and the interested public fresh approaches to the interdisciplinary field of climate studies and policy debates on climate change and sustainable development.
1. Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters: An Introduction
Jelle J.P. Wouters
2. Paddy Clime: Ecological Indigeneity in the Naga Uplands
Roderick Wijunamai
3. Lakes in Life: Mermaids and Anthropocenic Waters in the Bhutan Highlands
Jelle J. P. Wouters and Thinley Dema
4. Storied Toponyms in Bhutan: Affective Landscapes, Spiritual Encounters, and Clime Change
Kinley Dorji
5. Climing Everest Through Cryo-Visuals
Jolynna Sinanan
6. Dancing in the Rain: Climing Monsoon in Pre-Modern Assam
Rima Kalita
7. A Thirsty Himalayas: Rain Clime and Anthropogenic Drought in the Darjeeling Hills
Sangay Tamang
8. Clim(b)ing Slow-Moving Structures in the Garhwal Himalaya
Ainslie Murray
9. The Geopolitics of Riverine Climes in the Eastern Himalayas: The Brahmaputra–Yarlung Tsangpo and the India–China Border Conflict
Alexander E. Davis
10. Encountering Climate Change: Agential Mountains, Angry Deities, and Anthropocenic Clime in the Bhutan Highlands
Deki Yangzom and Jelle J. P. Wouters
11. Predatory Climes: Beastly Encounters in the Making of the Sundarbans
Jason Cons
12. Afterword: A Himalayan–Andean Conversation
Karsten Paerregaard
Biography
Jelle J.P. Wouters is Associate Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at Royal Thimphu College, and Chair of the Himalayan Centre for Environmental Humanities.
Dan Smyer Yü is Kuige Professor of Ethnology at Yunnan University and a Global Faculty Member of University of Cologne, Germany.
"Making climate change meaningful at the local scale is a precondition for empowering local communities to deal with its consequences on their own terms. This volume illustrates how the concept of clime can help achieve this goal by viewing climate variability and change from a rich, multispecies, and Himalayan perspective."
Theodore G. Shepherd, Grantham Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading, UK
“This volume is a veritable tour de force in the decolonial environmental humanities. Bringing dominant climate science into conversation with everyday human experience, it compellingly centers the affective, multispecies, and situated ways that climate change is encountered and interpreted across Himalayan sites, scales, and subjects. Incisive and nuanced in its analyses, this volume is essential reading for anyone concerned with the changing natures of life, entanglement, and agency in an age of ecological unraveling.”
Sophie Chao, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney, Australia
“This is not just a book about the Himalayas; it's a conversation starter, a call to action, and an invitation to see the world through a lens of multispecies encounters and shared climatic realities. These groundbreaking essays delve into the Himalayas, not just as a physical terrain, but as a living, breathing entity shaped by diverse climates and vibrant multispecies interactions.”
Arupjyoti Saikia, Professor of History, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India
