THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

I argued, are particu!arly pertinent in the Nepa!ese context since
scientific understanding of the human eco!ogy of the region has entered
a phase which col_t!d be cal led ' post-environmental !st,' . The 'modern'
phase of environmentalist thinking in Nepai tended to see peop!e in
terms of old-fashioned, inappropriate habits and behaviours to be thrown
out of tho window in the path of progress. The 'post-environmentalist'
phase, by contrast, sees people in terms of the actions and strategies
they adopt in their dealings with an uncertain world, Reinstating
people in this way gives human ecology more common ground with social
anthropology, which has, crf course, always had plenty to say about
' peopl" ,
11-1 asking 'who are the people?', this study of tie Yakha, with its
emphasis on the inherent ' fuzziness' of culture and the negot,iat ion and
manipulation of identities, raises themes which are current in the
anthropological literature, The cjuestion 'what is the environment?'
seems !ess familiar in anthropologica! studies. Even the most recent
works looking at 'environment' through anthropologica! lenses (including
many of the papers presented at the ASA annual conference in Durham in
Apri! 1992) seem to take the meaning of 'environment' as given. This
thesis, therefore, challenges the ease with which 'environment' as a
category is conventional!y used.
I have also argued that the connection between the two concepts,
'people' and 'environment', is prob!ematic, Rather than seeing the
environment as something to which people 'adapt', or with which they are
simply in some kind of 'relationship', I have argued that the more
usefu! anthropo!ogical approach is to look at the socia! construction of
the environment (and of the Yakha themse!ves) by observers and the