Event:15th Conference of the International Association for Ladakh Studies

From Wikiprogress.org

The 15th Conference of the International Association for Ladakh Studies will be held at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, from the 24th - 28th of August, 2011.

About

The Ladakh of India, together with the adjacent Western Himalayan regions of Baltistan, Lahaul, Spiti and Western Tibet, has for much of the last century existed on an unstable fault line between crucial cultural, religious and political blocs of South and Central Asia. Lying in the rain-shadow of the Greater Himalaya, these regions are now experiencing freak weather events more associated with the Indian monsoon. Centred on the Indus Valley, the region, which is also home to rare species of flora and fauna constituting a globally important biodiversity, has been substantially affected by recent economic development and population shifts occurring all along the Himalayan massif, and faces a challenging future. Changes in climate, rainfall and biodiversity have had a dramatic impact on human habitation, resource use and the prospects for cultural and economic development in the area and its environs.

This conference will bring together a multidisciplinary range of scholars, scientists and local specialists to examine not only the changes themselves, but the social, economic and political responses to them. Because of the complex and multi-faceted nature of the processes and challenges associated with this theme, the conference will be organized according to a series of sub-themes:

● Development and its relationship with biodiversity, natural resource use and conservation;
● Climatology and hydrology;
● Medicine, health, and ethno-botany;
● Migration and socio-economic change;
● Indigenous responses to change;
● Cultural change and heritage conservation;
● Cultural, religious, and political responses to these changes.

In the global imagination – from scholarly discourses to travel writings – Ladakh has exemplified the myth of ‘pristine nature’. This construction has fuelled a considerable travel industry while recasting its various subcultures or communities as tourist attractions. Among other topics, the conference will examine how this industry, development in general, and other drivers of change—e.g. enhanced natural resource use, the warming climate—affect the biological and socio-cultural diversity of Ladakh. It will explore how discourses of biodiversity or conservation may have served to create and/or reinforce perceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘purity’ that further disenfranchise populations either by relegating them to the margins of science, or by reinventing them as ‘primitive’ and ‘primordial’. This conference will explore the complex field of the ‘biosocial’ in Ladakh by asking how global discourses shape, or help produce, perceptions of nature, culture, biodiversity, and sustainability among the Ladakhi people. How, and in what ways, have discourses of biodiversity and conservation reconfigured social relationships in Ladakh in recent history? How do multiple actors within the household, village, district, or any of the governmental and non-governmental bodies perceive the intersections between people and their environment and with what ecological, political and social consequences? How do such perspectives differ across boundaries of class, caste, religion, gender and ethnicity?

External links

• The 15th Conference of the International Association for Ladakh Studies