Search

The Eastern Karakoram is a remote and under studied region of Ladakh in the northwestern Himalaya. The geology of the area provides insight into the evolution of the south Asian margin since the Paleozoic and is dominated structurally by the Karakoram fault, an ∼800 km long dextral strike-slip fault that bounds western Tibet. In this paper, a 1:250,000 geological map is presented based upon fieldwork and interpretation of satellite imagery. An overview of the geology of the Eastern Karakoram is also presented and includes a discussion of the architecture and kinematics of the central segment of the Karakoram fault. The construction of the map has aided our understanding of the initiation and evolution of the Karakoram fault and of the geology of the south Asian margin in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the possibility of defining a culture area by the comparative study of oral stories. Although neither the culture area concept nor the comparative study of oral traditions is currently fashionable in anthropology or folklore studies, both were once at the centre of theoretical debates in these disciplines. At the least, the hypothesis in this paper is intended to draw attention to the explanatory potential of both this concept and this methodology. The data presented in the essay comes both from the author's fieldwork on oral stories and rituals in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and from similar collections made in neighbouring regions. Based on this evidence (primarily three separate oral stories and one ritual event), the essay suggests that we can consider the 'extended eastern Himalayas' as a culture area. This proposed culture area consists of three regions: central Arunachal Pradesh, the Myanmar (Burma)/India/Bangladesh border, and upland Southeast Asia/Southwest China. Adapting the model of vertical descent from historical linguistics, the argument is that the shared stories derive from a common oral tradition among Tibeto-Burman speakers. Horizontal borrowing across populations is not ruled out, but this model is usually best suited to explain commonalities in material culture. For similarities in verbal culture, such as the common oral stories in the extended eastern Himalayas, vertical borrowing down generations is a more convincing explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long history of debate about the changing Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) environment, but with important disjunctures between research, international environmental agendas and institutions, and various different domestic policies at the national level. Within academe, a retreat from the Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation (THED) since the late 1980s has not been reflected to any degree in domestic policy agendas of India and China. Here, we make a comparative analysis of the “upstream downstream” debates (which claim that the resource use practices of upstream users have serious detrimental costs to those downstream) in two of the most powerful and populous countries of the HKH region: India and China. We find that the rejection of THED is, on the whole, contradicted but sometimes appropriated by different national players within important political arenas, and in this sense it becomes a discursive pawn in “games of the state.” Parts of the retreat from THED are simply ignored, and others are actively resisted. Set against these discursive maneuvers within domestic politics, the academic “state of the game” has undergone profound changes, shifting away from technically derived and science-led imperatives of environmental management toward issues of plural environmental truths, environmental justice, and hybrid knowledge. However, national debates have taken their individual routes, shaped largely by national political events. Thus, the poststructuralist turn in the social sciences in the academy and in some policy arenas, too—the deconstruction of one grand environmental narrative after another (e.g., deforestation, the wood fuel crisis, overstocking), the faltering claims of positivist science to deliver truth, and growing attacks of uncertainty—all this has had a contingent, but usually peripheral, impact upon national academic, political, and policy agendas in China and India. Some conclusions about policy studies are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]