“It’s a conspiracy theoryandclimate change”

Nayanika Mathur

doi:10.14318/hau5.1.005

Abstract

This article traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian Himalaya. Climate change emerged as an explanation for recurring incidences of humananimal conflict and the disappearance of a protected species through the labors of the local state bureaucracy. Even as the narratives on climate change were being imbued with expert authority, counternarratives dealing with the very same phenomena voiced by long-term residents of the Himalayas were summarily dismissed by the state as constituting mere conspiracy theories. This article accords both these narratives equal space and details the effects of the explanatory force of climate change in this region. On the basis of ethnography centered on humans, big cats, bears, and musk deer, it argues for an enhanced ethnographic attention to the political work done in the name of climate change. The article questions the analytic utility of the concept of the Anthropocene and ends by outlining certain distinctive characteristics of climate change as a concept and call to act upon the world.

Highlights

This article traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian Himalaya
On the basis of ethnography centered on humans, big cats, bears, and musk deer, it argues for an enhanced ethnographic attention to the political work done in the name of climate change
This article describes how climate change was brought into circulation as a state-endorsed category in a borderland Himalayan district in India through its linkage to the actions of hungry big cats and aggressive bears, as well as the fate of shy musk deer

Summary

Of beastly encounters and cervine disappearances in Himalayan India

This article traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian Himalaya. Even as the narratives on climate change were being imbued with expert authority, counternarratives dealing with the very same phenomena voiced by long-term residents of the Himalayas were summarily dismissed by the state as constituting mere conspiracy theories. This article accords both these narratives equal space and details the effects of the explanatory force of climate change in this region. From a world saturated with navigating humananimal relations on a daily basis, this article recounts below three distinct cases involving leopards, musk deer, Himalayan black bears, and humans It shows how they all link up to, as per state categorizations, climate change and conspiracy theories

The state and the nonstate

The case of the vanishing musk deer

The inexplicably aggressive Himalayan black bear

Findings

What changes with climate change?