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Book Review
| Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia. Edited by Gunnel Cederlof and Kalayanakrishnan Sivarama-krishnan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. xiii + 399 pp. Bibliography, photographs, maps, charts, index. Cloth $50.00.
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| Ecological Nationalism, an edited volume of essays selected by the anthropologists Gunnel Cederlof and Kalayanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan—of Finland's Uppsala University, and the University of Washington, respectively—is an ambitious and successful addition to the steadily growing literature on South Asian environmental history. Authors representing several academic disciplines contribute case studies concerning topics as diverse as fishery management, the spice trade, and wildlife landscapes in regions selected from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Through unusually cohesive editing, Cederlof and Sivaramakrishnan guide the conversation and extend the nationalist project recently revisited by the subaltern studies scholarly collective, and suggest that juxtaposing nationalism with the concept of ecology affords insight into South Asian environmental discourse. This book echoes and extends familiar themes for readers of Sanjay Subrahmanyam, James Scott, Benedict Anderson, and other subaltern studies scholars—such as the relationship between people and the state—and epitomizes the interdisciplinary nature of environmental history. A substantial bibliography and the inclusion of photographs, maps, charts, and ecological data are highlights of the collaboration between researchers from varied academic backgrounds and enhance the book's usefulness. |
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Ecological nationalism—as Cederlof and Sivaramakrishnan construct and define it—incorporates two possible interpretations of nature, the cosmopolitan and the nativist, which emerge from the dramatically disparate urban and rural usage patterns. State-sponsored guidance involves manipulating and uniting the two strains, and appropriating the environment and environmental policies as forms of national pride, thereby consolidating and legitimating the nation (p. 10). This analytical framework provides the launching point for the subsequent essays, which explore the potential and varied dimensions of environment and ecology this theory makes accessible. |
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Two of the book's chapters are exemplary models that employ the new paradigm. Cederlof's contribution, "The Toda Tiger," illustrates how life changed for an indigenous herding-based society, the Toda. Contestation within the British East India Company, and the competing visions of "local custom and aboriginal right" met with "those of a national or public good and of sovereign rule" (p. 67). Another superlative study is Claude Garcia and J.-P. Pascal's application of ecological methods to investigate the cultural dimensions of sacred forests in India's Western Ghats. Data concerning forest diversity, density, and rainfall reveal the gap between perception of sacred forests as spaces undisturbed by humans, and Garcia and Pascal's empirically supported findings. Their conclusion argues that place studies—sacred forests being one example—merge environment, history, and religion, and succinctly illustrate the "definition of the relationship between man and nature" (p. 228). |
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The book's greatest strength is developing the theoretical construct of ecological nationalism, which successfully integrates environmental themes with broader historiographical questions, including colonialism, modernity, and the nation-state. This work asks many good questions and should inspire subsequent research—a possible case study could involve testing the applicability of ecological nationalism in another area of the world such as in former Soviet-bloc nations or the colonial states of Africa. |
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Academics, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates exploring a broad range of themes within environmental history, anthropology, ecology, and geography will appreciate Ecological Nationalism. |
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Erik Solberg is a doctoral student in environmental history and coordinator for an oral history project at the University of Utah. His current research involves the transnational history of recreation and mountain cultural landscapes in Utah's Wasatch Mountains and India's Himalayas. |
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