Abstract:

During the last two hundred years, those working within industrial economy (capitalists, socialists) and society (popular movements, communists, socialists) were attempting to embed ecosystem within them. This has not worked. The global climate disruptions, depletion of lives in ecosystems, the destruction of soil fertility, the air, water and sound pollution are all manifestation of the boomerang effects. In this context, the calls for transcending this destructive industrialism have gained momentum across the globe. 

In this moment of global conjuncture, I explore the centrality of farming (Duncan 1995) in creating an ecologically and humanely non-destructive future. Ecological agriculture founded on the ecosystem processes has the potential to produce food and other necessities while providing a host of other functions required for ecosystem resilience in a world increasingly faced with uncertainties and resource depletion. Based on over a decade of involvement in ecological agriculture in Nepal including a recent 15 month long ethnographic research among a group of ecologically-oriented farmers in Nepal’s Chitwan valley, I propose that the way a variety of agronomic, labour and market practices these farmers are generating provide some clues to contributing towards a future firmly reembedded in the ecosystem.

Discussion Series: Reembedding economy and society into ecosystem: Inspirations from ecological farmers from Nepal’s Chitwan Valley by Anil Bhattarai, University of Toronto

April 26, 6:00 pm
Room 319, Kroon Hall

Event sponsored by South Asian Studies Council at Yale

For details, contact Kanchan Shrestha

About the Speaker

He writes a weekly column, (un)commonsense, for The Kathmandu Post, the mostly widely read English national daily in Nepal, and occasionally for other newspapers in Nepal and India. In Kathmandu, he is affiliated with Martin Chautari — a research and activist center, and plans to work with groups involved in building ecologically sustainable productive agricultural practices in Nepal and South Asia. Based at the University of Toronto’s Programme in Planning and Department of Geography, Anil Bhattarai is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation on “Building Ecological Future: Emergence and Spread of Ecological Agricultural Practices in Nepal.” He is exploring the way intentional ecological farming practices are transforming Nepal’s agrarian landscape in some profound ways and how those practices could provide insights into a viable future for the world increasingly enmeshed in multiple crises engendered by fossil-fuelled and globally integrated industrialism. With masters in Economics (Tribhuvan University), in public health (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) and Medical Anthropology (University of North-Carolina, Chapel Hill, US), his scholarly focus has been decidedly transdisciplinary.