HIST 283: "Environmental Histories of South Asia"

Fall 2005 - Mr. Fisher, Rice 314, 58524/58420

Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 10:00-11:50 (and by appointment)

Overview

            The diverse regions and micro-regions of South Asia have long been sites for complex interactions among living organisms, including humans, and the material world around them. The earliest substantial evidence about such interactions dates from the third millennium BCE. Over the more than fifty centuries that have followed, intricate webs of relationships among the land, the water, the flora, and the fauna have emerged and shifted, often producing tensions and even sharp ruptures. The most powerful agents for dramatic, long-term change have been the many competing peoples who have sought to reshape and develop the land, exploit and conserve the water, control and manage the flora, and domesticate and harness the fauna, according to their own diverse cultural valuations of them. All this has occurred within larger natural and human contexts, including global weather patterns, world-wide colonialism, and increasing transnational movements of peoples, animals, and plants.

This course explores crucial material, socio-political, and cultural relationships among the many peoples of South Asia and their ecosystems down to the present. We focus on a series of integrated examples that highlight these changing interrelationships. We also read the contending interpretations of them by a range of historians. Each class meeting will include both discussion and also presentation of contextualizing material by the instructor. Each student will write an independently designed research project, concentrating on a particular area of interest.

Readings:

This is a very rapidly changing academic field, hence no one or more textbooks adequately represent its many facets. As a result, the instructor will make available various required readings through Blackboard, with one hard-copy in the Reserve Room. To read these from Blackboard, you will need to have access to a computer that can handle both .pdf and .doc files (the machines in computer labs can do this). Since there are no required textbooks, please use the money you would otherwise have spent on them to either photocopy or print out from your print quota these approximately 575 pages of readings.

Course requirements:

Doing the assigned reading in advance, attending every class meeting, and participating through insightful questions and comments.

Write four position papers (500 words each). Only the top three will count in your final average. There is a penalty of 3 points off every two hours it is late. Each paper will focus on the readings, and will enable students to develop their own arguments in a coherent and insightful way.

Write one 2500-3000 word (10-12 page) research paper, with penultimate draft version submitted (on topic to be decided through individual consultation with the instructor). Students might productively select a particular region or set of specific issues, for example, an environmental history of Kerala or Bengal, or the process of sedentization, or relationships between a particular forest and the people who live within or otherwise interact with it.

Position Papers average: 30%; Class participation/discussion 20%; Research Paper: 50%

The grading is as follows: A+ 100-97; A 96-93; A- 92-90; B+ 89-87; B 86-83; B- 82-80; C+ 79-77; C 76-73; C- 72-70; [for first and second year students only, D 65-69; F below 65] [for all others, NE below 70].

Honor Code: The Honor Code applies to all assignments in this course. This means that any student found cheating, plagiarizing, turning in another person’s work as his/her own or otherwise violating the instructor’s explicit or implicit instructions will be subject to a hearing before the Student Honor Committee. To learn more about the Code, see the Rules and Regulations Section VI A and B in Fussers or the Student Handbook. (language courtesy of Susan Colley and the Student Honor Code Committee).

 

All requests for accommodation due to special needs that come to the instructor in advance endorsed by Ms. Boomer will be entertained.

 

Useful units of measure:

Metric:

Kilometer = 1000 meters = 3,281 feet = .625 mile

Hectare = 2.471 acres; 100 hectares= 1 sq. km = .386 sq miles = 247.1 acres

India contains 328 million hectares; Pakistan 80 million hectares; Bangladesh 14 million hectares

Specifically South Asian:

lakh/lac = 100,000; crore = 10,000,000

 

Schedule of Class meetings

9/6 Overview of the course: Environmental contexts and histories of South Asia.

Required: You will find this and the other readings on BLACKBOARD: Madav Gadgil and Ramahandra Guha, selections from Ecology and Equity (.pdf, 12d pp.)

 

9/8 Vanjati ["Forest Born People"], Adivasi ["Original People"], and tribal peoples

Required: I. Etiology of the Kharias, and II. Selection from Paraja by Gopinath Mohanty (.doc, 17pp)

Optional: Archana Prasad, "Baiga" (.pdf, 13d pp.)

 

9/10 (Saturday by noon with a penalty of 3 points off every two hours it is late) first 500 word (2 page) position paper due in Rice 314 or by email. Question: In light of the Gadgil-Guha model (ecosystem people, ecological refugees, and omnivores), discuss the perspective(s) from any one or more of the readings by or about Vanjati from yesterday compared with the perspective(s) from any one or more of the readings by Vedic, Hindu, or Buddhist peoples due next class.

 

9/13 Indus and Vedic and Buddhist peoples

Required: I. Selected Vedic Hymns; II. Selection from the Epic poem, Mahabharata; III. Selections from the Shastras; and IV. Edicts from Emperor Ashoka (.doc, 13 pp.)

For this class, read any three of your colleagues' position papers (on Blackboard) and come to class prepared to discuss in depth any one of those three.

 

9/15 Islam, sedentization, and the Mughal imperial state

Required: Singh, "Forests, Pastoralists and Agrarian Society in Mughal India" (.pdf, 15d pp.)

 

9/20 Regional water conservation and controls

Required: either David Hardiman, "Small-Dam Systems of the Sahyadris" (.pdf, 13d pp.) and/or Samant, "Manifestation of the urban public…ghats in Ujjain" (.pdf, 21 pp.)

9/22 The coming of "green[?] colonialism"

Required: Grove, "Conserving Eden: (The European) East India Company and their Environmental Policies..." (.pdf, 34 pp.)

 

9/24 (Saturday noon with a penalty of 3 points off every two hours it is late) second 500 word position paper due. Question: Compare and contrast what "nature" means to the Mughal empire, to one regional people of India (either in the Sahyadris or Ujjain), and to the British empire (from Grove and/or Rajan).

 

9/27 Early colonial scientific forestry

Required: Rajan, "Imperial Environmentalism or Environmental Imperialism" (.pdf, 24d pp.)

For this class, read any three of your colleagues' position papers (on Blackboard) and come to class prepared to discuss in depth any one of those three.

 

9/29 Colonial forestry and people's resistance

Required: Guha and Gadgil, "State Forestry and Conflict in British India" (.pdf, 37 pp.)

 

10/1 (Saturday by noon with a penalty of 3 points off every two hours it is late) third 500 word position paper due. Question: Compare and contrast the perspectives/theses about European empire and ecology held by Rajan, Guha-Gadhil, and Sivaramakrishnan.

 

10/4 A case study: Bengal

Required: Sivaramakrishnan, "Limited Forest Conservancy in Southwest Bengal" (.pdf, 38 pp.)

For this class, read any three of your colleagues' position papers (on Blackboard) and come to class prepared to discuss in depth any one of those three.

 

10/5-14 meet individually with instructor to select your research paper topic.

10/6 No Class (individual meetings in lieu)

 

10/9 Colonialism and grazing lands and peoples

Required: Neeladri Bhattacharya, "Pastoralists in a Colonial World" (.pdf, 19d pp.)

 

10/11 Colonialism, canals, and other water controls

Required: David Gilmartin, "Scientific Empire and Imperial Science: Colonialism and Irrigation Technology in the Indus Basin" (.pdf, 23 pp.)

 

10/13 No Class, Yom Kippur

 

10/15 (Saturday by noon with a penalty of 3 points off every two hours it is late) fourth 250-500 word position paper due. Question: Compare and contrast the presuppositions/theses of Bhattacharya, Gilmartin, and Prashad.

 

10/18 Colonialism and urban waste

Required: Vijay Prashad, "Technology of Sanitation in Colonial Delhi" (.pdf, 22 pp.)

For this class, read any three of your colleagues' position papers (on Blackboard) and come to class prepared to discuss in depth any one of those three.

10/20 Deforestation and land use

Required: Richards et al, Changing Land Use…1850-1970," (.pdf, 34 pp.)

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Fall Break

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11/1 M. Gandhi, conservation, and civilization

Required: selections from M. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (.doc, 42 pp.)

 

11/3 Gandhian deep ecology[?]

Required: Vinay Lal, "Gandhi and the Ecological Vision" (.pdf, 11d pp.)

 

11/8 Trees and villagers

Required: Ann Gold, "Sin and Rain: Moral Ecology in Rural North India" (.pdf, 16d pp.)

At start of class: Submit paper topic prospectus and preliminary bibliography.

 

11/10 Wildness in the Dangs

Required: Ajay Skaria, selections from Hybrid Histories, (.pdf, 27d pp.)

 

11/15 The Chipko ["Hug the Trees"] Anti-deforestation Movement

Required: Guha, "Chipko: Social History of an 'Environmental' Movement" and "Epilogue, the Afterlives of Chipko" (.pdf, 25d pp.)

 

11/17 Women as the environment

Required: Vandana Shiva, "Women in the Forest," from Staying Alive (.pdf, 21d pp.)

At start of class: Outline of research paper due.

 

11/22 Sacred Groves

Required: Uchijiyamada, "'The Grove is our Temple'..." (.pdf, 11d pp.)

 

11/29 Narmada and other dams

Required: Arundhati Roy, "The Greater Common Good" (.doc, 46 pp.) and/or Vandana Shiva, "Water Peace versus Water Wars," (.doc, 11 pp.)

 

12/1 Joint Forest Management or Ecodevelopment

Required: Sundar, "Unpacking the 'Joint,'..." (.pdf, 25 pp.) and/or Agarwal "Participatory Exclusions, Community Forestry, and Analysis for South Asia and a Conceptual Framework" (.pdf, 26 pp.) and/or Baviskar, "States, Communities and Conservations: The Practice of Ecodevelopment in the Great Himalayan National Park," (.pdf, 17d pp.)and/or Krishna, "A "Genderscape' of Community Rights in Natural Resource Management" (.pdf, 23d pp.) and/or Thamizoli, "Mainstreaming Gender Concerns in Mangrove Conservation" (.pdf, 7d pp.) and/or Singh, "Women and Community Forests in Orissa" (.pdf 9d pp.)

 

12/6-8 Pakistani Ecology

Required: Mustafa, "Linking Access…Perceptions of Irrigation and Flood Management" (.pdf, 12 pp.), and/or Mustafa, Production of an Urban Hazardscape," (21 pp.), and/or Siddiqui et al., "Monitoring Changes…Sindh-Pakistan" (.pdf, 5 pp), and/or Knudsen, "State Intervention and Community Protest: Nature Conservation" (.pdf, 12d pp.)

12/8 at start of class: Penultimate draft of research paper due

 

12/13-15 Bangladeshi Ecology

Required: Rukunuddin Ahmed et al, "Gender Equity in Social Forestry Programs" (.pdf, 18 pp.), and/or Momtaz, "Institutionalizing Social Impact," (13 pp .pdf), and/or Hadi, "Fighting arsenic at the grassroots" (.pdf, 8 pp.) and/or Biswas et al., "Photovoltaic technologies" (.pdf, 9 pp.).

 

12/20 (7:00 PM, Tuesday) As scheduled in exam period research paper due

images courtesy Gordon Johnson, Cultural Atlas of India (New York: Facts on File, 1996)