82 – Conserving South Asian National Parks

October 4, 2025
8:30 am
Neue Aula
Awareness about climate change evokes a growing “planetary consciousness”. In South Asia, anthropogenic destruction and species extinction are causing widespread demands for conserving critically endangered environments. Both state and civil society actors regard declaring national parks as practical solutions to such problems. However, a good number of projects are implemented without considering the specific needs of indigenous residents and local species. At times, environmental protection agendas masquerade ploys to further marginalize subaltern groups, primarily through displacement, causing contestation across spatial, judicial and political terrains. This panel interrogates the social and cultural lives of South Asian national parks by exploring how different actors define, foster, establish and implement the conservation paradigm from a comparative perspective. We invite contributions based on empirical, theoretical or historical grounding that reflect on the (re-)making of national parks within South Asia. Contributions may focus on multiple sites of dispute, including contests over the right of use, human-wildlife conflicts and competing visions about sustainable conservation. Others may inquire into the social life of national parks as spaces of multi-species interaction, determined by different players and their notions of natures/cultures. Given the urban expansion, the interaction between urban peripheries and natural landscapes (agrarian, forest lands) also offers a fertile ground of inquiry. We seek to explore a set of related questions: In which ways do different actors produce knowledge about national parks and how do they negotiate the territorial, cartographic, physical, ecological, religious, economic and socio-cultural boundaries of parks? In which ways are conservation policies entangled with power relations? How can the quest for “naturbanity” be realized in future South Asian cityscapes?

Convenors

Philipp Zehmisch
Snehashish Mitra

Presentations

Boundary transgressions and behavioural inversions: the case of Bardiya National Park (south-west Nepal)
Vouiller Nolwen - Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (LAS), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France
Kanha, Baiga Chak & Elwin: Attempts to Save Endangered Tribal Cultures in a “sort of National Park” in Central India
Rashkow Ezra - CHSS, Montclair State University, Montclair, United States
Fuzzy borders: Conflicts and solidarities in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, South India
Kjosavik Darley Jose - Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Aas, Norway
George Lijo Perumpallithazhath - Eco-development & Tribal Welfare Wing, Kerala Forest Department, Thiruvananthapuram, India
Dangerous and Domestic: Human-animal encounters in the buffer zone
Bhandari Siddhi - Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru, India