Publications by Suchismita Das
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2023
In 2016, summarily outlawing all chemical inputs, the Indian state of Sikkim transitioned to comp... more In 2016, summarily outlawing all chemical inputs, the Indian state of Sikkim transitioned to completely organic agriculture. Despite “organic discontents” of farmers and citizens about autocratic implementation, lowered yields, and unsatisfactory prices, “Sikkim Organic” enjoys global accolades and local compliance. The paradox of alternative agriculture in the Global South is that it is often promoted by the same state-science-capital hegemonic formation that pushed the conventional paradigm. How has the Sikkimese state negotiated this paradox and continued to claim success, when other radical state-led organic transformations have failed? Recent scholarship advocates for contextual definitions of organic success, beyond the parameters of yield and profit. They examine the socio-political concerns of farmers, middlemen and consumers that shape their engagement with the phenomenon. This lens is seldom applied to the state. Drawing on ethnographic conversations with farmers, local consumers, state officials and discourse analysis of governmental literature and speeches, this article analyzes the Sikkimese state’s efforts at consolidating its hegemony as a process of political brand-building. Highlighting the cultural aspects of policy implementation, it analyzes the affective resonances about traditional agrarian practices and about the morality of organic markets that the state discursively creates to support its organic regime. This extends the critique of the state beyond the focus on governmentality and neoliberalization through state-led certification/standardization. The article neither absolves the state of its failures nor dismisses the potential of progressive organic policies. It shows the significance of contextual cultural-political framings in determining outcomes of large-scale experiments towards sustainable agrarian futures.
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Conference Papers by Suchismita Das
National Seminar - "The Environment As Meta Narrative", Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University Of Delhi , 2020
Multicultural recognition is a defining goal of the postcolonial Indian nation, enshrined in the ... more Multicultural recognition is a defining goal of the postcolonial Indian nation, enshrined in the motto of “unity in diversity”. How is diversity reimagined in the Anthropocene, when it is not only a social, but also an ecological good, as per the hegemonic discourse of biodiversity conservation as a mode of environmental protection? How is ethnopolitics reimagined through this intersection of biological and cultural diversity? This paper asks this question with reference to the ecopolitics engaged in by the Nepali community in Sikkim, who, as a group whose identity references a foreign nation-state, face a deficit of belonging within the Indian national imaginary, despite their formal citizenship. In 2001, the predominantly Nepali villagers of Kitam petitioned for their adjoining reserve forest to be reclassified as a bird sanctuary, specifically for the protection of the peacock, that was found nowhere else within the Himalayan state. In this move and subsequent participation in biodiversity conservation projects, the villagers have sought to articulate an identity as ecological stewards, entangling their cultural diversity with the peacock as valued biota. What is the traction and the limits of this mode of seeking, what I term as, bio-cultural recognition? The melancholia-inducing (Povinelli 2002) demands made by the state of recognition-seeking Nepali citizens has been well-critiqued (Middleton 2016, Shneiderman and Turin 2006, Sinha 2006). As Nepali citizens now seek recognition of their belonging in multispecies knots (Haraway 2016), forming something akin to political alliances with the peacock, how do we theorize the environment as an alternate avenue of liberal recognition-politics? What specific demands do ecological discourses make, along which nature-culture can be legible as valued diversity? How do these demands compare with the state’s ethnological matrices for slotting and governing cultural difference (Cohn 1987, Dirks 2001)? The aim here is to interrogate the transformative process of ecological multiculturalism engendered by environmentalism as a normative frame of our times.
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In recent years the Indian border state of Sikkim has sought to capitalize on its Himalayan biodi... more In recent years the Indian border state of Sikkim has sought to capitalize on its Himalayan biodiversity and ethnic diversity to promote itself as an ideal ecotourism destination. Various ecotourism festivals are being promoted as a means of funding conservation and development projects through tourism income. Conventional development subjects are now expected to become neoliberal “ethno-preneurs” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). This paper interrogates the performance of this ethno-preneurialism in a Sherpa village. I detail two festivals, one organized by the forest department and the second by the community itself, after the failure of the first. The rub, in the community’s performance of this ethno-preneurialism is in being caught between two competing gazes vying for hegemony. The rise of the tourist gaze (Urry 1990), embodied by the consumer-king, as the new arbitrator of ethno-politics creates a crisis of authority for the development state that organized the first festival. The forest bureaucracy and elected representatives, while mobilizing the tourist gaze to discipline subjects, finds it hard to devolve power to it. Tourism performance by community hosts is thus caught in this impasse of conflicting demands – to appease and address their performance to the political patrons who influence every day, material village life, or to the capitalist guests who hold the promise of income-for-services-rendered. What are the fallouts if hosts fail to mediate this patron-guest impasse? What are the strategies deployed towards a mediation? What conclusions can we draw about an emergent tourism-oriented ethnopolitics on the Indian frontier by investigating these tourism performances?
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The village adjoining the Kitam Bird Sanctuary, in India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim... more The village adjoining the Kitam Bird Sanctuary, in India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim began marketizing its nature-culture through ecotourism. Sikkim is emerging as a popular green destination, associated in the Indian imaginary with its biodiversity hotspot status, alpine landscapes and colorfully-clothed, prayer-wheel spinning Buddhist ethnic groups. Kitam, inhabited predominantly by non-Buddhist nepali ethnic groups, seeks a share in this growing green economy. The stakes for the villagers is not only increased income, but a recognition/affirmation of their national belonging through the tourist gaze. As a community whose “name itself indexes foreignness”, they are often perceived as outsiders, despite multi-generational presence in the landscape. How does participation in ecotourism’s green economy enable a renegotiation of the disadvantage associated with the nepali community’s historical mobility? How does their suspiciously-cast mobility tarry with the valued mobility of ecotourists visiting this landscape?
Clifford (1997) juxtaposes routes, that privilege cosmopolitan travelers with roots signaling the arborescence attributed to communities as index of their powerlessness. In challenging this simple cosmopolitan traveler-local community binary of power-relations, I draw attention to the strategic invocation of routes in the politics of belonging. The green economy, a creative site for seeking recognition refracts such recognition through a lens of tourism aesthetics. Here Kitam’s less-distinct Hindu culture, and the sanctuary’s less-distinct tropical landscape, in appearing un-exotic to tourists, presents an aesthetics deficit. To overcome this, villagers turned to the patina of the sanctuary’s colonial routes, highlighting it as an entry-point for British colonial visitors from India into the then semi-autonomous Sikkimese kingdom. I explore how in contemporary trekking-route development, the historical power of colonial routes, and the economic power of contemporary ecotourists’ routes are being deployed towards the political end of seeking affirmation of the rootedness of the local community. The potentials and pitfalls of this strategy and its inversion or re-inscription of power-inequalities is the topic of inquiry.
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Bordering Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, Sikkim is a frontier Himalayan Indian state, with little share... more Bordering Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, Sikkim is a frontier Himalayan Indian state, with little shared ethnicity, history or culture with the hegemonic lowlands. Showcasing its biological and cultural diversity through ecotourism, Sikkim is striving for positive recognition within India’s political paradigm of “unity in diversity”. National tourists are interpellated as agents of multicultural recognition, interacting with marginal communities while generating conservation revenue. Here traditional melas (fairs) are now becoming ecotourism events. In policy meetings however, state elites see melas as connoting to lowlanders the frontier’s indolent, unentrepreneurial lifestyle, where “we eat, drink and make merry”, and “pollute the picturesque landscapes” in the process. They want “this culture to go”, replaced by ecotourism festivals, showcasing for visitors Sikkim’s marketized nature-culture in a more positive light.
Why have the mela and ecotourism festival become opposing discursive terms? What is the ideal subjectivity of frontier environmental citizenship being governmentalized through the knowledge-power of the festival? I argue that festivals seek to conduct conduct of frontier citizenship embodying, (sometimes irreconcilably), authentic cultural diversity, environmental stewardship and neoliberal entrepreneurship; which can receive positive recognition from visiting citizen-tourists. Analyzing the policy discussions and the execution of an ecotourism festival by Sikkim’s forest department in a sanctuary fringe, I trace this environmentality and its successes and failures. How does the imputed “tourist gaze” become a metonym for national panopticism to discipline frontier subjects? In scrutinizing ecotourism as a site of multicultural recognition (Povinelli 2002; Taylor 1992), the power of the green gaze cannot be understood only through Foucault’s (1977) focus on discipline by hierarchical surveillance or Urry’s (1990) concern about the hermeneutic circle of the tourist’s gaze. The gaze as affirmation of national belonging calls for attention to desires to be seen/recognized, thus drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Satre among others, to investigate its interactional character
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In India’s politics of multiculturalism, animated by the motto of “unity in diversity”, its north... more In India’s politics of multiculturalism, animated by the motto of “unity in diversity”, its north-eastern frontier state of Sikkim captures the national imagination as a pristine, alpine tourism destination. Travel brochures depict this erstwhile outlier Himalayan kingdom as pine forest-dotted hill-slopes inhabited by colorfully-clad, prayer-wheel spinning Buddhist mountain communities living in harmony with nature. In the project of territorial encompassment of national margins, this visually distinct nature and culture gets framed as a biocultural diversity hotspot and repository of “authenticity”. Domestic tourists are thus interpellated as economic contributors to nature conservation and as agents of multicultural recognition interacting with marginal communities. Thus an “authentic” Sikkimese landscape comes to be associated largely with temperate forests, often dominated by the Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria Japonica).
This paper asks about the contours and consequences of this affective articulation. Counter to the iconic cedar are Sikkim’s tropical forests, dominated by Sal (Shorea robusta), Chilaune (Schima Wallichi) etc. Less visually diverse than the mainland landscapes, Sal trees characterize the regions’ lower reaches. How are these two distinct landscapes depicted in tourism brochures, conservation literature and everyday tourism practices? What distinct affect does each engender and what is the resultant politics of recognition? Since plants can be “markers of humans’ presence on the land and….contested symbols of human projects of rule” (Besky and Padwe 2016:10), which community’s presence do particular plants invested with particular sets of affects legitimize and why? How are non-Buddhist Nepali communities living by the broad-leaf forests integrated or excluded from the expression of “unity in diversity”? In reading the cedar and sal’s natural and social life as indexical of contested situatedness of people in landscapes, this paper highlights how trees, “enrolled in material [and] representational projects [of] territorial practice” (ibid:14) play a mediating role in claims and counter-claims about national and subnational belonging.
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Tourism on national frontiers bring mainland guests in contact with indigenous hosts. The state m... more Tourism on national frontiers bring mainland guests in contact with indigenous hosts. The state may thereby try to hegmonically encompass outliers in a national imaginary. How do guides frame and mediate this contact? Thus, do they thwart, forward or modify the quest for spatializing nation-states?
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Book Reviews by Suchismita Das
Anthropology Book Forum , 2022
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Conservation & Society, 2019
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Papers by Suchismita Das
In the year 1971, the renowned India film-maker Satyajit Ray made a documentary on Sikkim, commis... more In the year 1971, the renowned India film-maker Satyajit Ray made a documentary on Sikkim, commissioned by the royal family, to showcase the small Himalayan Kingdom which was then a protectorate of India. The content of the film however failed to impress its royal patrons and hence it was not publicly released. A few years later the kingdom was merged into India as the twenty-second state of the union and the film was banned by the Indian government for its sensitive topic. After more than thirty years of unavailability and hence a resultant unique legendary status, the film finally became available for unrestricted public viewing from 2011. This paper traces the eventful trajectory of this film, treating its journey as metaphoric of the political history of Sikkim as it negotiated its status within the larger nation-state during various configurations of political power-structures. Reading back from the controversies engendered in each phase, the article sheds light on the underlyi...
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Publications by Suchismita Das
Conference Papers by Suchismita Das
Clifford (1997) juxtaposes routes, that privilege cosmopolitan travelers with roots signaling the arborescence attributed to communities as index of their powerlessness. In challenging this simple cosmopolitan traveler-local community binary of power-relations, I draw attention to the strategic invocation of routes in the politics of belonging. The green economy, a creative site for seeking recognition refracts such recognition through a lens of tourism aesthetics. Here Kitam’s less-distinct Hindu culture, and the sanctuary’s less-distinct tropical landscape, in appearing un-exotic to tourists, presents an aesthetics deficit. To overcome this, villagers turned to the patina of the sanctuary’s colonial routes, highlighting it as an entry-point for British colonial visitors from India into the then semi-autonomous Sikkimese kingdom. I explore how in contemporary trekking-route development, the historical power of colonial routes, and the economic power of contemporary ecotourists’ routes are being deployed towards the political end of seeking affirmation of the rootedness of the local community. The potentials and pitfalls of this strategy and its inversion or re-inscription of power-inequalities is the topic of inquiry.
Why have the mela and ecotourism festival become opposing discursive terms? What is the ideal subjectivity of frontier environmental citizenship being governmentalized through the knowledge-power of the festival? I argue that festivals seek to conduct conduct of frontier citizenship embodying, (sometimes irreconcilably), authentic cultural diversity, environmental stewardship and neoliberal entrepreneurship; which can receive positive recognition from visiting citizen-tourists. Analyzing the policy discussions and the execution of an ecotourism festival by Sikkim’s forest department in a sanctuary fringe, I trace this environmentality and its successes and failures. How does the imputed “tourist gaze” become a metonym for national panopticism to discipline frontier subjects? In scrutinizing ecotourism as a site of multicultural recognition (Povinelli 2002; Taylor 1992), the power of the green gaze cannot be understood only through Foucault’s (1977) focus on discipline by hierarchical surveillance or Urry’s (1990) concern about the hermeneutic circle of the tourist’s gaze. The gaze as affirmation of national belonging calls for attention to desires to be seen/recognized, thus drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Satre among others, to investigate its interactional character
This paper asks about the contours and consequences of this affective articulation. Counter to the iconic cedar are Sikkim’s tropical forests, dominated by Sal (Shorea robusta), Chilaune (Schima Wallichi) etc. Less visually diverse than the mainland landscapes, Sal trees characterize the regions’ lower reaches. How are these two distinct landscapes depicted in tourism brochures, conservation literature and everyday tourism practices? What distinct affect does each engender and what is the resultant politics of recognition? Since plants can be “markers of humans’ presence on the land and….contested symbols of human projects of rule” (Besky and Padwe 2016:10), which community’s presence do particular plants invested with particular sets of affects legitimize and why? How are non-Buddhist Nepali communities living by the broad-leaf forests integrated or excluded from the expression of “unity in diversity”? In reading the cedar and sal’s natural and social life as indexical of contested situatedness of people in landscapes, this paper highlights how trees, “enrolled in material [and] representational projects [of] territorial practice” (ibid:14) play a mediating role in claims and counter-claims about national and subnational belonging.
Book Reviews by Suchismita Das
Papers by Suchismita Das
Clifford (1997) juxtaposes routes, that privilege cosmopolitan travelers with roots signaling the arborescence attributed to communities as index of their powerlessness. In challenging this simple cosmopolitan traveler-local community binary of power-relations, I draw attention to the strategic invocation of routes in the politics of belonging. The green economy, a creative site for seeking recognition refracts such recognition through a lens of tourism aesthetics. Here Kitam’s less-distinct Hindu culture, and the sanctuary’s less-distinct tropical landscape, in appearing un-exotic to tourists, presents an aesthetics deficit. To overcome this, villagers turned to the patina of the sanctuary’s colonial routes, highlighting it as an entry-point for British colonial visitors from India into the then semi-autonomous Sikkimese kingdom. I explore how in contemporary trekking-route development, the historical power of colonial routes, and the economic power of contemporary ecotourists’ routes are being deployed towards the political end of seeking affirmation of the rootedness of the local community. The potentials and pitfalls of this strategy and its inversion or re-inscription of power-inequalities is the topic of inquiry.
Why have the mela and ecotourism festival become opposing discursive terms? What is the ideal subjectivity of frontier environmental citizenship being governmentalized through the knowledge-power of the festival? I argue that festivals seek to conduct conduct of frontier citizenship embodying, (sometimes irreconcilably), authentic cultural diversity, environmental stewardship and neoliberal entrepreneurship; which can receive positive recognition from visiting citizen-tourists. Analyzing the policy discussions and the execution of an ecotourism festival by Sikkim’s forest department in a sanctuary fringe, I trace this environmentality and its successes and failures. How does the imputed “tourist gaze” become a metonym for national panopticism to discipline frontier subjects? In scrutinizing ecotourism as a site of multicultural recognition (Povinelli 2002; Taylor 1992), the power of the green gaze cannot be understood only through Foucault’s (1977) focus on discipline by hierarchical surveillance or Urry’s (1990) concern about the hermeneutic circle of the tourist’s gaze. The gaze as affirmation of national belonging calls for attention to desires to be seen/recognized, thus drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Satre among others, to investigate its interactional character
This paper asks about the contours and consequences of this affective articulation. Counter to the iconic cedar are Sikkim’s tropical forests, dominated by Sal (Shorea robusta), Chilaune (Schima Wallichi) etc. Less visually diverse than the mainland landscapes, Sal trees characterize the regions’ lower reaches. How are these two distinct landscapes depicted in tourism brochures, conservation literature and everyday tourism practices? What distinct affect does each engender and what is the resultant politics of recognition? Since plants can be “markers of humans’ presence on the land and….contested symbols of human projects of rule” (Besky and Padwe 2016:10), which community’s presence do particular plants invested with particular sets of affects legitimize and why? How are non-Buddhist Nepali communities living by the broad-leaf forests integrated or excluded from the expression of “unity in diversity”? In reading the cedar and sal’s natural and social life as indexical of contested situatedness of people in landscapes, this paper highlights how trees, “enrolled in material [and] representational projects [of] territorial practice” (ibid:14) play a mediating role in claims and counter-claims about national and subnational belonging.