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

Chapter Two: Ecological Anthropology in Nepal: Some Themretical Problem
The Himalayan region encompasses a range of ecosystems,
habitats and species unparalleled in a similar area anywhere
else on Earth. From a biogeographic point of view f t is less
a coherent region than a meeting ground: the confluence of
great evolutionary flows of species assemblages from India,
Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, Much the same is true of
the people who have flowed into the regfon along much the same
sorts of exes. As these biological and cultural diversities
have met up so they have modified one another and entered into
the complex and ever-evolving patterns of accommodation that,
in toto, have made the Himalaya what they now are, But the
problem for any sort of sustainable development is to know
what the Himalaya now are (Thompson et el 1986:137-8).
2.1 Introduction
The social anthropology of Nepal, indeed of the Himnlaya in general,
is almost as diverse as the region it seeks to represent. However, if
the social anthropologist's reflex response when discussing the
Mediterranean is to ask about honour and shame, then the response to
discussions of the Himalaya might well be to ask about ecology, There
ere various reasons for this. The social anthropology of Nepal has
arguably so fer lacked the 'great works' cheracterist ic of places such
as Melanesia, the Sudan or Indonesia which contribute to the
epistemological development of the discipline as a whole, However, many
of the more parochial 'great works1 that the anthropology of Nepal has
produced give ecology more than the cursory treatment it regularly
receives in monographs from other parts of the world. I am thinking,
for example, of FUrer-Haimendorf's (1964) 'The Sherpas of Nepalt,
Macfarlane's (1976) 'Resources and Population: a Study of the Gurungs of
Nepal', and Sagant's (1976) 'La Paysan Limbu: sa Maison et ses Champs',
The history and geography of Nepal must go part way to explaining
the nature of 'great works' such as these, Nepal is a nation which,