Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I combine local conceptions of interdependence with the theoretical innovations of ontological anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, with the aim of introducing new ways to explore and discuss the complexity and diversity of climate change management in the Himalayas.

Paper long abstract:

Unpredictable weather is a challenge for the high altitude desert of Ladakh, the Indian Himalaya. Untimely snowfall, reduced glacial runoff, more rainfall and an increasing human presence all contribute to changing conditions and increasingly unstable weather. Proposed solutions assemble local environmental knowledge and external development interventions that focus upon sustainability, conservation and/or transformation of livelihood strategies and technical approaches. What tends to be concealed from public discourse, however, is the nature of the relationship between villagers, ritual specialists, and the supernatural guardians of weather and sources of water. Here, moral discourses, mythical histories, magical practices, and performances of "everyday religion" act together to produce the climate.

It has become possible to include gods and spirits as actors in public discourse once again thanks to the work of STS scholars and their considerations of the cosmopolitical (De La Cadena 2010; Latour 2004; Stengers 2005). By contemplating indigenous conceptions of interdependence and the merits of applying an actor-network methodology, the paper considers how the theoretical innovations of ontological anthropology and Science and Technology Studies introduce new ways of exploring the complexity and diversity of climate change impact in the Himalayas, in which scientific evidence and development intervention combine with ritual performances, practices of geomancy and supernatural agency to produce distinct and site-specific assemblages of climate management. The aim is to devise new methodological and theoretical frameworks that can bring together the religious, the magical, and the scientific when examining the production of knowledge about weather and nature in the Himalayas.