Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India

Developing an effective Romani integration strategy: experiences of ethnoculturally neutral and specific policies in the Czech Republic

While the question of how to integrate Romani communities has increased in political significance since the 1990s, a consensus has yet to be reached on how best to design integration policies for such a heterogeneous group of people. This article examines debates on whether ethnoculturally specific or neutral policies are more appropriate. Using the Czech Romani integration policy as a case study, it identifies as a significant problem the conflation of the Romani ethnic identity with the low socio-economic status of many (but not all) Roma. This has led to a policy focus on programmes to tackle social deprivation rather than addressing the discrimination which affects all Roma regardless of class. As a consequence of the decentralisation of power in the Czech Republic and the ingrained nature of anti-Romani prejudice, policies, whether ethnoculturally neutral or specific, will be implemented or rejected at the local level on the basis of local priorities

Valuation of ecosystem services: paradox or Pandora’s box for decision-makers?

The valuation of ecosystem services (ES) employs a range of methods. Based on a literature review and selected empirical examples, we consider major opportunities and challenges in ecosystem services valuation. We analyse when different valuation methods are appropriate and most useful. We demonstrate that mechanisms to capture benefits and costs are needed; and that the use of valuation should be incorporated more widely in decision-making. However, we argue that ecosystems are complex systems: neither the ecosystems or the services that they provide are a sum, but are an interrelated system of components. If a component vanishes the whole system may collapse. Therefore, critical natural capital management, in particular, cannot rely on monetary values; whilst the maintanance of the whole system should be considered. Monetary valuation of biodiversity and landscapes is also problematic because of their uniqueness and distinctiveness, a shortage of robust primary valuations, and numerous complexities and uncertainties. We conclude that mixed method and deliberative discourse techniques, as well as proper integration of research tools, should be more widely applied to help decision-makers and the public to understand and assess changes in ES. The approaches developed and tested by us, as presented in this paper, can provide more complete, comprehensive and impartial insights into a range of benefits that humans derive from ecosystems