Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters by Wouters, Jelle J.P.; Smyer Yü, Dan;

Short description:

This book hosts a collection of historical and fieldwork-based case studies and conceptual discussions of climate change in the greater Himalayan region. It offers students, academics, and the interested public fresh approaches to the interdisciplinary field of climate studies and policy debates on climate change and sustainable development.

Long description:

Woven together as a text of humanities-based environmental research outcomes, Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters hosts a collection of historical and fieldwork-based case studies and conceptual discussions of climate change in the greater Himalayan region.

The collective endeavour of the book is expressed in what the editors characterize as the clime studies of the Himalayan multispecies worlds. Synonymous with place embodied with weather patterns and environmental history, clime is understood as both a recipient of and a contributor to climate change over time. Supported by empirical and historical findings, the chapters showcase climate change as clime change that concurrently entails multispecies encounters, multifaceted cultural processes, and ecologically specific environmental changes in the more-than-human worlds of the Himalayas.

As the case studies complement, enrich, and converse with natural scientific understandings of Himalayan climate change, this book offers students, academics, and the interested public fresh approaches to the interdisciplinary field of climate studies and policy debates on climate change and sustainable development.

"Making climate change meaningful at the local scale is a precondition for empowering local communities to deal with its consequences on their own terms. This volume illustrates how the concept of clime can help achieve this goal by viewing climate variability and change from a Himalayan multispecies perspective."

Theodore G. Shepherd, Grantham Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading, UK

“This volume is a veritable tour de force in the decolonial environmental humanities. Bringing dominant climate science into conversation with everyday human experience, it compellingly centers the affective, multispecies, and situated ways that climate change is encountered and interpreted across Himalayan sites, scales, and subjects. Incisive and nuanced in its analyses, this volume is essential reading for anyone concerned with the changing natures of life, entanglement, and agency in an age of ecological unraveling.”

Sophie Chao, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney, Australia

“This is not just a book about the Himalayas; it's a conversation starter, a call to action, and an invitation to see the Himalayan world through a lens of multispecies encounters and shared climatic realities. The groundbreaking chapters delve into the Himalayas, not just as a physical terrain, but as a living, breathing entity shaped by diverse climates and vibrant multispecies interactions.”

Arupjyoti Saikia, Professor of History, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India

Table of Contents:

1. Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters: An Introduction  2. Paddy Clime: Ecological Indigeneity in the Naga Uplands  3. Lakes in Life: Mermaids and Anthropocenic Waters in the Bhutan Highlands  4. Storied Toponyms in Bhutan: Affective Landscapes, Spiritual Encounters, and Clime Change  5. Climing Everest Through Cryo-Visuals  6. Dancing in the Rain: Climing Monsoon in Pre-Modern Assam  7. A Thirsty Himalaya: Rain Clime and Anthropogenic Drought in the Darjeeling Hills  8. Clim(b)ing Slow-Moving Structures in the Garhwal Himalaya  9. The Geopolitics of Riverine Climes in the Eastern Himalayas: The Brahmaputra-Yarlung Tsangpo and the India-China Border Conflict  10.  Encountering Climate Change: Agential Mountains, Angry Deities, and Anthropocenic Clime in the Bhutan Highlands  11. Predatory Climes: Beastly Encounters in the Making of the Sundarbans  12. Afterword: A Himalayan-Andean Conversation