Overview
- Based on a localized and historically grounded case study, readers receive novel insights into the Himalayan border region
- Three empirical chapters provide readers with an innovative analysis of the relationships between trade, identity and mobility
- By advancing current debates on borderlands and transboundary environments, the book offers several key lessons for future research
Part of the book series: Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research (AAHER)
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Drawing from
extensive archival work and long-term ethnographic research, this book focuses
on the so-called Bhotiyas, former trans-Himalayan traders and a Scheduled Tribe
of India who reside in several high valleys of the Kumaon Himalaya. The area is
located in the border triangle between India, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR,
People’s Republic of China), and Nepal, where contestations over political
boundaries have created multiple challenges as well as opportunities for local
mountain communities.Based
on an analytical framework that is grounded in and contributes to recent
advances in the field of border studies, the author explores how the
Bhotiyas have used their agency todevelop
a flourishing trans-Himalayan trade under British colonial influence; to assert
an identity and win legal recognition as a tribal community in the political
setup of independent India; and to innovate their pastoral mobility in the
context of ongoing state and market reforms. By examining the
Bhotiyas’ trade, identity and mobilitythis
book showshow and why the Himalayan border region has evolved as an agentive site
of political action for a variety of different actors.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Christoph Bergmann is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University (Germany). As an interdisciplinary scholar with particular expertise in the domains of social anthropology and geography, much of his work has sought to establish a locally and historically contextualized understanding of stakeholder activities in High Asia and, more recently, Sub-Saharan Africa. He adopts an actor-oriented approach to scrutinize processes of border-making and to unravel geographically and socially uneven patterns of development, with a particular focus on the knowledge, aspirations and agendas of those considered as socio-economically or socio-culturally marginal.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Himalayan Border Region
Book Subtitle: Trade, Identity and Mobility in Kumaon, India
Authors: Christoph Bergmann
Series Title: Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29707-1
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-29705-7Published: 26 April 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-80631-0Published: 22 April 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-29707-1Published: 18 April 2016
Series ISSN: 1879-7180
Series E-ISSN: 1879-7199
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 195
Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations
Topics: World Regional Geography (Continents, Countries, Regions), Trade, Political Science, Anthropology