In Plantation Worlds, Maan Barua interrogates debates on planetary transformations through the histories and ecologies of plantations. Drawing on long-term research spanning fifteen years, Barua presents a unique ethnography attentive to the lives of both people and elephants amid tea plantations in the Indian state of Assam. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nearly three million people were brought in to Assam’s plantations to work under conditions of indenture. Plantations dramatically altered the region’s landscape, plundered resources, and created fraught worlds for elephants and people. Their extractive logics and colonial legacies prevail as durations, forging the ambit of infrastructures, labor, habitability, and conservation in the present. And yet, as the perspectives of the Adivasi plantation worker community and lifeworlds of elephants show, possibilities for enacting a decolonial imaginary of landscape remain present amid immiseration. From the margins of the Global South, Barua offers an alternative grammar for articulating environmental change. In so doing, he prompts a rethinking of multispecies ecologies and how they are structured by colonialism and race.

A beautifully illustrated reference work on the biology, ecology, conservation status and management of all thirteen species of wild cattle and buffalo. This book will be a valuable resource for students, researchers, and professionals in animal behaviour, behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology.

This book presents a comprehensive account of the transformation of Assam's forests and ecology from early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It locates present-day ecological conflicts in the colonial era when contest over forest, land, and resource began to take new shape. Arupjyoti Saikia delineates how forest resources in Assam were mapped and intergrated with mechant capitalism since the early nineteenth century. He shows how imperial forestry practices led to changes in traditional resource utilization patterns. The book also examines the political economy of conservation practices. It explores the question of law and conservation, role of institutions and organizations, and the changing role of the forests in imperial economy. The book argues how the making of forest policy in the postcolonial period was defind by the complexities of the political matrix. It discusses plantation, silvicultural practices, protection and regeneration of forests, and livlihood practices. The author also analyses public debates surrounding ecology and environmental changes in conservation practices after the 1980 Act.

The Routledge Companion to Northeast India is a trans-disciplinary and comprehensive compendium of a vital yet under-researched region in South Asia. It provides a unique guide to prevailing themes, theories, arguments, and history of Northeast India by discussing its life-forms – human and not – languages, landscapes, and lifeways in all its diversity and difference. The companion contains authoritative entries from leading specialists from and on the region and offers clear, concise, and illuminating explanations of key themes and ideas. A hands-on, practical, and comprehensive guide to Northeast India, this companion fills a significant gap in the literature and will be an invaluable teaching, learning, and research resource for scholars and students of Northeast India Studies, South Asian and Southeast Asian societies, culture, politics, humanities, and the social sciences in general.

How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of Elephants is an anthropological consideration of coexistence, grounded in people’s everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam, Northeast India, this book examines human–elephant copresence and how minds, tasks, identities, and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions, asymmetries, and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect. Developing a multifaceted picture of human–elephant relations in a postcolonial setting, each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter, where elephants adapt to human norms, people are subject to elephant projects, and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human–elephant relations, felt through the elephant’s power to disrupt and transform human lives, as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human–animal relations, environmental humanities, conservation, and South Asian studies.

Periplus is proud to present the first comprehensive photographic guide to the birds of the Indian subcontinent. This ebook offers over 800 species and distinct sub-species and contains over 1,000 full-color photographs. Each species has a distribution map. Many of the photographs in this magnificent volume appear for the first time and have been carefully selected to show the most important features of the species illustrated. In several cases, different plumages or flight shots are included. The concise text provided vital information on the plumages, voice and habits of each species covered and includes new information. Over a hundred related species are also mentioned in the texts. The maps are accompanied by a note on the status and distribution. This ebook will enable accurate field identification in one of the world's most diverse avifaunal regions. Indispensable reading for all bird lovers.

A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Sri Lanka and India is the best, most comprehensive photographic guide to the birds of South Asia. Because of its vast size and geographical location, the Indian subcontinent has some of the world's most diverse avifauna. It boasts of thousands of species. This birdwatching book covers over 800 species and distinct sub-species and contains over 1,000 full-color photographs. Each species has a distribution map Many of the photographs in this magnificent volume appear for the first time and have been carefully selected to show the most important features of the species illustrated. In several cases, different plumages or flight shots are included. The concise text provides vital information on the plumages, voice and habits of each species are also mentioned in the texts. The maps are accompanied by a note on the status and distribution. This birdwatching book will enable accurate field identification in one of the world's most diverse avifaunal regions. Indispensable reading for all bird lovers.