I keep a running annotated list of books and articles that I read, which I call my Annotated Bibliography of Salient Texts, or ABST. Sometimes, in the margins of my books, I’ll scribble these four letters to remind myself to add this quote to the annotation for this book. I have over 150 ABST entries to date, and am always adding more. I wanted to give you an example of what an entry looks like, so I’ll share what I wrote about the article “Keep Out… Come Again,” in Earth Island Journal‘s Winter 2021 publication.
Why do I keep this ABST? Although I am no longer in school, I like to have quick access to books that I’ve read and their most profound moments. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use this information, but what can I say, I’m highly attached to my books and the knowledge they bring me. I like to know that this information is easily accessible just in case I need it someday. Futhermore, writing an ABST entry is a way for me to interact with the text on another level. I get to practice my writing and my critical thinking; it is a personal methodology I use in order to deepen my understanding of what I read. Many of my posts on this blog are just edited versions of my ABST entries.
So here it is, my ABST entry for “Keep Out… Come Again.” Note that this entry is a medium length entry. Entries for books can be 3-10 pages of notes and quotes from the text. Just a few notation notes: normally on this blog I like to center quotes from the text, so I put them in bold, however in my ABST I underline all quotes and put in bold the most salient findings of the text. I also put personal thoughts in brackets [like this].
Amron, Yardain. 2021. Keep Out… Come Again: The Underbelly of American-Styled Conservation in the Indian Himalayas. Earth Island Journal 35 (4), pp. 49-53.
Discussion of Western top-down conservation practices brought to the Himalayas and how they affect local communities. The park focused on is the Great Himalayan National Park or GHNP in the Tirthan Valley. “In the two decades since it was formed, the park has displaced over 300 people from their land, disrupted the traditional livelihoods of several thousand more, and forced yet more into dependence on a risky (eco)tourism industry run in large part by outside ‘experts.’ In many ways, the GNHP is a poster child of how the American national park model — conceived at Yellowstone and exported to the Global South by a transnational nexus of state and nonstate actors, continues to ignore the sociopolitical and cultural realities of a place” (50). The mountainous areas in and around the park were traditionally used for grazing sheep and goats, as well as medicinal herb collection. American funded research claims that the presence of herders in the area harms the biodiversity, but local research from the Centre for Pastoralism claims the opposite, and say that these grazing practices were necessary for the maintenance of herb biodiversity in the area.
Has eco-tourism actually helped the region? “Eco-development, of course, is the current cool idea for making exclusionary conservation acceptable” (51-2). The park was named a UNESCO world heritage site despite protests from locals. An international nonprofit called Friends of the GNHP wrote the application for UNESCO. Organizations and the government claimed the new status would raise revenue for locals in the eco-tourism industry, “but on the whole, locals are losing opportunities to outside entrepreneurs who come with deeper pockets, digital marketing savvy, and already established networks of potential clientele” (52). [Check out book: Kullu: The Valley of the Gods]. Families are stuck with one of the only livelihood options being to serve tourists in the accommodation business, as their former livelihoods have become inaccessible. “Many youths are so ashamed to work as servants on their own land that they’re fleeing the valley altogether” (52).
Governments and western organizations/ideals are also making these livelihood options difficult for locals. Amron calls a romanticized outsider vision of the area, “a consultant’s fantasy” (53), because “rather than provide support to help locals become owners in the tourism industry, the government and World Bank offered them tour guide, portering and cooking training” (53). This funding doesn’t help with development, but pressures locals to become servants to first world, western, white, visitors. [Reminds me of quote from Naomi Klein in The Battle for Paradise: “At the core of this battle is a very simple question: Who is Puerto Rico for? Is it for Puerto Ricans, or is it for outsiders?”]
The Edited Jottings of an Amateur Anthropologist 