2025/08/11 by Salini Saha · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Intellectual Property Law
paper · doi:10.2458/jpe.6439
openalex publication_date 2025/08/11 · openalex created_date 2025/08/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article reexamines the discourse on wildlife conservation arguing against a fetishized understanding of 'nature' governing Third World notions about conservation and management of natural resources. While the dominant scientific perspective has a holistic planetary vision to environment and wildlife protection, what is often ignored is that contemporary environmental politics is intrinsically related to questions of identity. A quintessential perspective in this regard is the recent rise in environmental justice movements which looks at the interface between animals, humans and the environment through politico-cultural processes. Drawing on narratives based on an extensive ethnographic study of a local community in agrarian West Bengal, India, the article locates the role of culture in shaping environmental struggles and identity politics rooted in ecological concerns of the Third World. The village Musharu, located in the East Bardhaman district of West Bengal, India, is known for its peaceful coexistence with poisonous cobras. While the cohabitation story itself draws attention to the multispecies encounters between humans and snakes as wild creatures inhabiting the terrain, what is especially significant is the rapidly changing climate model in these regions which have significantly impacted this cohabitation. Monsoonal irregularities, an adverse condition threatening farmers of Bardhaman in recent years, have impacted the Musharu community in yet more devastating ways. The snakes as manifestations of their very own village deity Jhankeshwari, are especially being affected by this climate adversity, involving the roles of various stakeholders trying to 'save' the snakes in their own ways. This leads to a discrepancy between the narratives presented by national environmental bodies, local conservationists, and village inhabitants' own perceptions of their non-human neighbors. While the conservationists feel that the snakes are in need of scientific protection, the villagers do not believe in the necessity of any such interventionist technique meted out to them, primarily because the snakes themselves are protective figures for them. An approach which establishes wilderness as an autonomous domain devoid of human encroachment is outrageous, according to them, particularly because it impinges on their ways of essential relatedness and interaction with these divine snakes. What does environmental sustainability then entail: practices of conservation or practices of survival and sustenance? The article concludes that to view human living and their everyday subsistence activities as distinct from wildlife conservation strategies may lead to a serious misrecognition of the environmental problem.