Abstract
We discuss why nature reverence and pro-environmental thinking among indigenous peoples inhabiting a Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Rajasthan does not translate into more actual conservation practice. We point to the way that the post-Independence dispossession of these peoples from their lands has resulted in a failure of institutional organization and collective action. Lacking locally meaningful institutions for monitoring and policing forest resource use, even individuals personally committed to conservation lose the will to behave responsibly with regard to their forests. We use this discussion to refine a cognitive anthropological framework of the environment that prioritizes both individual commitment and social organization and that attempts to understand how local beliefs and values intersect with, and are constrained by political contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
Magra means mountain in local tribal dialects, and baoji, though widely used to refer to deities and spirits, is more generally “a term of respect also used for elders who possessed supernatural knowledge” [1].
- 2.
- 3.
For a survey of this work, see Kempton [8].
- 4.
The description and analysis of traditional ethnobiological knowledge systems—and mainly ethnobotanical and ethnozoological knowledge—is still a vibrant project within cognitive anthropology, as demonstrated by the contemporary societies and journals devoted to this topic. See, for example, the Journal of Ethnobiology produced by the Society of Ethnobiology and also the International Society of Ethnobiology.
- 5.
This follows the more prosaic, yet nevertheless important and time-intensive, agenda of documenting the wide range of cultural models found within America and elsewhere. On this change in research agenda, see D’Andrade [2, 7]; D’Andrade and Strauss [36]; Hutchins [20]; Kempton [8]; Strauss and Quinn [6].
- 6.
They are “scheduled,” along with India’s low status and formally untouchable caste communities, for government aid programs aiming to alleviate poverty and “backwardness.”
- 7.
See, for example, Snodgrass [44].
- 8.
- 9.
Interviews were usually conducted in Mewari, a Rajasthani dialect and lingua franca in the area, rather than in Hindi or in the particular Bhili or other tribal dialects spoken in the sanctuary.
- 10.
Spotted Deer (Chital, Axis axis), Swamp Deer (Barasingha, Cervus duvauceli), Bluebull (Nilgai, Boselaphus tragocamelus), and other large mammals are no longer found in the sanctuary due to overhunting and habitat loss; Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) and other smaller game animals, such as (Chinkara, Gazella bennettii), are only rarely seen.
- 11.
This reverses the pleas of other environmental and ecological anthropologists to devote more attention to nature and ecological processes in their studies of the interactions of human populations with the environment. See, for example, Moran [53].
- 12.
The phrasing here is taken from a personal communication from Roy D’Andrade. In the same communication, D’Andrade points out that “all collective beliefs and models are shared, but some shared beliefs and models are not collective. Thus, Americans share the idea that other Americans have materialistic values (which is not true). But you don’t have to believe this, and Americans don’t know that other Americans think this, so it is not a collective belief.”
- 13.
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Acknowledgements
Research was sponsored by Colorado State University and by the National Geographic Society (Grant #7791-05: “Spreading Saffron: Ritual & Forest Conservation in Rajasthan, India”). Special thanks go to the many employees of the Rajasthan Forest Department and the government of India who supported our research in so many diverse ways. Thanks also for academic support offered by Bhupal Nobles’ PG College (Udaipur) and Mohanlal Sukhadia University (Udaipur). We also thank the American Institute of Indian Studies (New Delhi) for hospitality and the arrangement of research permissions. Special thanks go to the MA students from Bhupal Nobles’ PG College (Udaipur, Rajasthan) who administered our questionnaire: Durga Singh Chundawat, Lalit Kumar Jain, Naresh Jain, Fateh Singh Jhala, Tribhuvan Singh Jhala, and Arvind Singh Rathore.
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Snodgrass, J.G., Sharma, S.K., Lacy, M.G. (2013). Nature Reverence does not mean Conservation in Tribal Rajasthan: Culture, Cognition, and Personal and Collective Commitments to the Environment. In: Sharma, B., Kulshreshtha, S., Rahmani, A. (eds) Faunal Heritage of Rajasthan, India. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01345-9_17
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