Continuing existence: viability and indigenous youth action in Himachal Pradesh, India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper uses field research conducted in Himachal Pradesh in 2021–2022 to analyse the efforts of Kinnauri young people to critique and address social and environmental crises in their region. The expansion of capitalism, poor governance, and climate change are contributing to major environmental loss and social crises in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh. Young people with origins in the region are becoming important in critiquing this process, especially at the everyday level and through social media. They focus especially on how Kinnauri ‘existence’ has been ‘hollowed out’ and fragmented through social and environmental change. At the same time, Kinnauri young people seek to repopulate and integrate ‘existence’, especially through identifying particular symbols – or metonyms – that express the possibility for recuperating social and environmental life. In making these points, we offer a case study in how a marginalised indigenous community is actively and creatively responding to capitalist intensification and climate change through building new viabilities.