Book Reviews : HARIPRIYA RANGAN, Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 272. AKHILESHWAR PATHAK, Laws, Strategies and Ideologies: Legislating Forests in Colonial India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 185
{"title":"Book Reviews : HARIPRIYA RANGAN, Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 272. AKHILESHWAR PATHAK, Laws, Strategies and Ideologies: Legislating Forests in Colonial India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 185","authors":"A. Prasad","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000113","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The rise of environmental history in the last decades of the twentieth century opened up history writing to new themes and uncharted terrain. These included an exploration of the histories of states and polities in their relationship with natural resources on the one hand and history of movements for the rights of the people on the other. In the course of writing these histories the dominant discourses also made scathing critiques of modern development paradigms and their impact on marginalised and disadvantaged sections of the society. The resultant ideology of the ’Environmentalism of the Poor’ was done by people who were involved with existing environmental movements as activists or merely as ideologues. Today, after 15 years of the advent of environmentalism, the movements that provided it inspiration find themselves in a crisis. Little wonder then that there is now a serious attempt to re-evaluate the approaches of environmental history that popularised environmentalism as an ideology amongst Indian intelligentsia. The books under review are an attempt precisely at this task. Haripriya Rangan’s book Of Myths and Movements is an attempt to reinterpret the Chipko movement and its meaning for sustainable regional development. She writes that Chipko was a ’social movement’ that emerged nearly 25 years ago in the Garhwal Himalayas, and today ’transformed by a variety of narratives it exists","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"124 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000113","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000113","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
The rise of environmental history in the last decades of the twentieth century opened up history writing to new themes and uncharted terrain. These included an exploration of the histories of states and polities in their relationship with natural resources on the one hand and history of movements for the rights of the people on the other. In the course of writing these histories the dominant discourses also made scathing critiques of modern development paradigms and their impact on marginalised and disadvantaged sections of the society. The resultant ideology of the ’Environmentalism of the Poor’ was done by people who were involved with existing environmental movements as activists or merely as ideologues. Today, after 15 years of the advent of environmentalism, the movements that provided it inspiration find themselves in a crisis. Little wonder then that there is now a serious attempt to re-evaluate the approaches of environmental history that popularised environmentalism as an ideology amongst Indian intelligentsia. The books under review are an attempt precisely at this task. Haripriya Rangan’s book Of Myths and Movements is an attempt to reinterpret the Chipko movement and its meaning for sustainable regional development. She writes that Chipko was a ’social movement’ that emerged nearly 25 years ago in the Garhwal Himalayas, and today ’transformed by a variety of narratives it exists
期刊介绍:
For over 35 years, The Indian Economic and Social History Review has been a meeting ground for scholars whose concerns span diverse cultural and political themes with a bearing on social and economic history. The Indian Economic and Social History Review is the foremost journal devoted to the study of the social and economic history of India, and South Asia more generally. The journal publishes articles with a wider coverage, referring to other Asian countries but of interest to those working on Indian history. Its articles cover India"s South Asian neighbours so as to provide a comparative perspective.