Seeking Recognition in Assemblages: The Politics of More-than-Human Diversity on the Himalayan Frontier
This book project, based on her doctoral research, aims to widen the scope of the analysis of multicultural recognition in India. Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sikkim, she traces how ‘diversity’ is reimagined in the Anthropocene, when, with the rise of biodiversity conservation discourses, it is not only a social, but also an ecological good. As ethnic minorities hitch their cultural diversity to the valued biota of the region, thereby seeking validation as inter-species assemblages, the book evaluates the scope of this emergent multispecies recognition politics, and its impact on India’s motto of ‘unity in diversity’.
Development Imaginaries, Infrastructure and Climate Subjectivities in Asia - Funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC, USA)
Using this ‘Seed Grant for Collaborative Research on Asia’ Dr Das and Dr Hayden Shelby from the University of Cincinnati, USA are parallelly conducting ethnographic studies of border road construction projects in Sikkim, India and of a canal redevelopment program in Bangkok, Thailand. By comparing two infrastructure development projects in two different topographical and geo-political positions in Asia – i.e., an upland border state and a lowland metropolitan city – this study examines the impact of climate change discourses on development imaginaries and planning, and conversely the impact of development imaginaries on climate change discourses and adaptation practices. Their work aims to interrogate how specific material interventions by two development states in the global south mediate people’s experience of climate change and of climate vulnerability, and influences their subjective outlook towards their future in these times of acute environmental vulnerability.
Cultural Analysis of Environmental Precarity and Adaptation in the Eastern Himalayas - Funded by Ahmedabad University
The above mentioned collaborative research is tied to a longer individual ethnographic project focusing on the increasing vulnerability of mountain roads to severe weather conditions, and people's adaptive response to this phenomenon. This study examines environmental adaptation as a negotiation between the politics of development, the science of climate adaptation and the everyday cultural perceptions of precarity.