A Foray into Ladakhi Place Names
Résumé
"In choosing to study the relationship between Himalayan societies in Nepal and Ladakh and their environment, the authors of this book propose a new interpretation of present-day landscapes, of their diversity as well as of their transformation. Natural data on the Himalayan range, demography, perceptions and representations of milieux, their history, current local examples of resource management, especially tree management, are the subject of often unprecedented investigations... In light of this, what about preconceived ideas in terms of the environmental crisis affecting the Himalayas-Ganges Plain area, the causes generally invoked and the recommended solutions? What can be said of the predicted disasters and of the factors identified so far? By associating various disciplines (geography, social anthropology, history, agronomy...) with the knowledge imparted by the populations studied, meticulous fieldwork, as well as archive research, this book prompts us to re-examine the catastrophist theories on the degradation of Himalayan environments by placing them in a spatial, temporal and cultural context. Thus, in these mountains, the issue seems not so much one of environmental problems linked to deforestation - which is, moreover, supposedly a recent phenomenon - as of problems of a society that, in trying to protect its environment, leaves the most underprivileged populations by the wayside. It would also appear that any intervention in these milieux needs to take into account their symbolic and religious dimension, as well as the very precise knowledge populations have of them. Finally, this work contributes to fuelling debates on major environmental changes on a planetary scale and no doubt to reformulating them.