Entangled Lives : Human-Animal-Plant Histories of the Eastern Himalayan Triangle

This book considers three questions about understanding the past. How can we rethink human histories by including animals and plants? How can we overcome nationally territorialised narratives? And how can we balance academic history-writing and indigenous understandings of history? This is a tentative foray into the connections between these questions. Entangled Lives explore them for a large area that has seldom been explored in academic inquiry. The 'Eastern Himalayan Triangle' includes both uplands and lowlands. The region is the meeting point of three global biodiversity hotspots connecting India and China across Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The 'Triangle' is treated as a multispecies site in which human histories have always been utterly intertwined with plant and animal histories. It foregrounds that history is co-created – it is always interspecies history – but that its contours are locally specific. Cover 1 Entangled Lives 3 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 Maps and Plates 9 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction 17 More-than-human histories 18 Nationally territorialised narratives 21 Academic history-writing and indigenous understandings of the past 24 Terminology 30 A three-part book 32 Part I Tthe Deep Past 35 1 An Epic Crash 37 An experimental space: The Triangle 39 Ecologies 43 2 Human Beginnings 47 Niches 51 The Triangle in history 52 3 Changing the Environment 54 Domestication 57 Exploiting plants 59 Rice 59 Bamboo 62 Exploiting animals 63 The mithun 65 Long-distance connections 67 Long-term human history 67 4 Livelihoods 68 High-altitude life: Transhumance 68 Mountainside life: Shifting cultivation 70 Valley life: Fixed-field cultivation 72 Part II CosmologiIes 77 5 Stories of Human Origins 79 Triangle stories as historical sources 79 Cultural variety 82 Oral narratives 84 The creation of the world 86 Natural phenomena 89 Human origins 93 Death and the afterlife 96 Human mobilities 98 Tentative patterns 102 Cosmological commonalities 102 Cosmological centres 103 Triangle understandings of deep history 105 6 Human–Animal Histories 107 Animals as kin 110 Animal power 113 Animals: Wild and domestic 118 Hunted animals 119 The hunter-hero 122 Hunting and gender 124 Eating wild animals 126 Displaying wild animals 127 Wild animals and human inequality 128 Domestic animals 130 Animal exchange and trade 131 Animals as sacrifice 133 Animal sacrifice and different religious traditions 135 Human–animal interactions 142 7 Human–Plant Histories 143 Origin stories and plants 144 Sacred groves 144 Ceremonial plants 145 Medicinal plants 148 Companion plants 151 Poisonous plants 152 Agricultural crops 153 Cultivating a mountain field 154 The meanings of bamboo 159 Enduring staple crops 162 Plants clothing human bodies 163 Gendering plants 164 Human–plant interactions 166 Part III More-Tthan-Hhuman HhiIstoriIes 167 8 Cultural Geographies 169 ‘Civilisation’ 169 Microbes, enzymes and cultures 172 Dairy 173 Fermentation 175 Pathogens 177 Plant geographies 177 Bamboo 178 Rice 178 Textile plants 179 Animal geographies 182 Sea snails 182 Hornbills 185 Mithuns 189 Animal symbols of self-identification 195 Interspecies labour relations 199 The dynamism of spatial imaginations 202 9 Exploiting Natural Resources 204 Foraging undomesticated plants and animals 205 Resources from the earth’s surface and below 213 Mud 217 Quarrying and mining 220 Semi-precious stones 221 Fossil fuels: Coal, oil and gas 224 The limits of exploitation 226 10 Dealing with Environmental Decay 227 Human-aided species migration 228 Environmental awareness 232 Exploring wildlife 236 Scientific forestry 242 Vertical conservation 244 Wildlife sanctuaries 245 The tragedy of the Triangle’s commons 251 Environmental subjectivities 255 11 The Elephant Strikes Back 258 Zoonotic diseases 260 Uncontrollable invasive species 261 Animal attacks 262 Animals destroying human property 267 Human resentment against protected animals 268 Multispecies encounters 272 Conclusion 274 Copyrights and Sources 280 Plate 280 Bibliography 285 Index 364 "This book considers three questions about understanding the past. How can we rethink human histories by including animals and plants? How can we overcome nationally territorialised narratives? And how can we balance academic history-writing and indigenous understandings of history? This is a tentative foray into the connections between these questions. The authors explore them for a large area that historians seldom choose as their unit of inquiry. The "Eastern Himalayan Triangle" (elaborated further in the abstract that follows) includes both uplands and lowlands and is the meeting point of three global biodiversity hotspots, and connects India and China across Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan. They treat the "Triangle" as a multispecies site in which human histories have always been utterly intertwined with plant and animal histories. The main objective is to foreground that history is co-created - it is always interspecies history - but that its contours are locally specific. The book presents a wealth of environmental specificities in which human history is embedded. The multispecies complexities encountered require the authors to recalibrate the conventions of academic history-writing and they do so by advancing new spatial and temporal imaginations - pushing beyond both methodological nationalism and traditional periodisation - and carefully considering local life-worlds and multispecies cosmologies"-- Provided by publisher