2025/11/01 by Bal Krishna Sharma · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Multilingual Education and Policy #Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0047404525101760
openalex publication_date 2025/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/12/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This article examines human-elephant engagements in the tourist town of Sauraha, Nepal, by focusing on the semiotic, spatial, and embodied practices that shape its eco-semiotic landscape. Using the heuristic of sites of engagement and ethnographic data, it analyzes how neoliberal conservation materializes through signage, sculptures, media, and corporeal performances. Findings show that the multispecies encounters are shaped by the political economy of wildlife tourism and reflect tensions between commodification, care, and tradition. Anthropomorphic events like elephant polo and beauty pageants spectacularize elephants by promoting conservationist rhetoric while obscuring the precarious conditions of elephants and the labor of mahouts. Meanwhile, ritual and affective practices of care reveal more reciprocal interspecies relationships. I argue that sociolinguistic inquiry is essential for understanding how animals are branded, consumed, and at times dignified in tourism economies and contribute to broader debates on neoliberal conservation, interspecies ethics, and human-wildlife entanglements in the Anthropocene. (Anthropomorphism, conservation, elephant, Nepal, political economy, wildlife tourism)