European Bulletin of Himalayan Research: New issue

A special issue titled “Storying multi-species relationships, commoning and the state in the Himalayas” edited by Erik de Maaker and Dan Smyer Yü has been published. This is the EBHR issue 58 and it marks the completion of the journal’s transition from a printed journal to an online open access journal, now referenced on the DOAJ.

The editors are particularly happy to celebrate these achievements with this special issue which broadens the geographical scope of the EBHR, taking us from the Western Himalayas to Yunnan in Southwest China and invigorates current debates on multi-species relationships.

Erik de Maaker’s introduction provides a comprehensive overview about changing Himalayan contexts of multi-species relations in everyday life. Tara Bate takes us to Humla where a plan to set a conservation area threatens to jeopardize the relations which the inhabitants of the Limi valley built up with their environment through their pastoral practices. Zhen Ma considers that water is for the Dai people a relational being, nowadays disrupted by new development-led irrigation schemes. Also set in Yunnan, Rui Sun’s article describes a ‘cross-species love’ between flower growers and roses, taking the metaphor up to the relationships between a mother and her son. The last article of the special issue, by Sangay Tamang, presents a colonial history of the ‘environmentalism of the Hills’ that produced a separation between the local population and their environment.

Table of content:

Special issue: Storying multi-species relationships, commoning and the state in the Himalayas

Edited by Erik de Maaker and Dan Smyer Yü

• Erik de Maaker Reimagining spaces, species and societies in the Himalayas (Réimaginer les espaces, les espèces et les sociétés en Himalaya)
• Tara Bate Competing perceptions of landscape in the Limi Valley: politics, ecology and pastoralism (Perceptions antagoniques du paysage dans la vallée de Limi : politique, écologie et pastoralisme)
• Zhen Ma Water as a relational being in Xishuangbanna: presence, scarcity and management (L’eau comme être relationnel dans le Xishuangbanna : présence, rareté et gestion)
• Rui Sun Yunnan flowers: storying cross-species love beyond metaphors (Fleurs du Yunnan : raconter l’amour entre espèces au-delà des métaphores)
• Sangay Tamang Environmentalism in the Darjeeling hills: an inquiry (L’environnementalisme dans les collines de Darjeeling : une enquête)

Article

• Radha Adhikari and Jeevan R Sharma Gendered consequences of social changes in Nepal: rich possibilities (Les riches possibilités de l’étude genrée du changement social au Népal)

Translation

• Katia Buffetrille Foreword to the translation of ‘The ranking place’ by Samten Karmay and Philippe Sagant
• Samten Karmay and Philippe Sagant The ranking place in the Sharwa home (ancient Amdo)

Debate

• Axel Michaels What we Indologists owe to anthropologists

---

---