Maan Barua
Biographic Data
| ID | 3635852 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maan Barua |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maan |
| FAMILY NAME | Barua |
| SIGNATURE | BARUA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 427 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
On Urban Photography: Infrastructure in a Minor Key
Does macaques’ use of hanging cables in Old Delhi point toward an urban arboreality? Maan Barua reflects on unforeseen ways of negotiating access to infrastructure among other-than-human lifeforms in the city
Plantationocene: A Vegetal Geography
A Plantationocene is a threshold for understanding planetary change. Rather than attributing environmental transformations to the universal agency of humankind, a Plantationocene grounds the alteration of landscape in histories of colonialism and race, and takes the plantation to be a pivotal engine for producing novel but fraught natures. This paper develops a vegetal geography of a Plantationocene, engaging relations between plants and people a…
Reconciliation Infrastructures
Drawing on a case of proposed ‘wildlife-friendly’ flyovers in Assam, Maan Barua attends to the politics of such ‘reconciliation infrastructures’ which contribute to the ongoing dispossession of rural inhabitants and allow capitalist expansion to continue unabated
Feral ecologies: The making of postcolonial nature in London
Through an ethnography of parakeets and other denizens in London, this article expounds the concept of the feral and foregrounds its purchase for an anthropological inquiry into urban life. Ecological, cultural, and political connotations of ferality impinge upon evaluations of what counts and is allowed to flourish as metropolitan nature. Ferality is constructed through nativist and racial taxonomies which promote a biopolitics of eradicating pa…
Animating the urban: An Ethological and Geographical Conversation
Urban animals and their political ecologies constitute an arena of geographical scholarship that has intensified in recent years. Yet, little headway has been made in terms of understanding how sentient creatures inhabit and negotiate dynamic, metabolic environments. Focusing on urban macaques in Indian cities, the paper develops a conversation between geography and ethology. Firstly, the conversation provides insights into what urbanisation migh…
Lively commodities and encounter value
Rendering nonhuman life for sale is a fundamental facet of contemporary capitalism. Political economy extensively examines how nature is commodified but fails to analyse the difference liveliness of animals makes to processes of commodification. Drawing upon empirical work on lions and elephants in the political economies of tourism and biodiversity conservation in India, this paper proposes analytics for understanding commodification and accumul…
Encounter
Rewilding: Science, Practice, and Politics
Rewilding is being promoted as an ambitious alternative to current approaches to nature conservation. Interest is growing in popular and scientific literatures, and rewilding is the subject of significant comment and debate, outstripping scientific research and conservation practice. Projects and research are found the world over, with concentrations in Europe, North America, and on tropical islands. A common aim is to maintain, or increase, biod…
A Theory of Flagship Species Action
The flagship species approach is an enduring strategy in conservation. Academic discussion on flagship species has focussed on two dimensions: on what basis should they be selected and how have they been put to use. Here we consider a third dimension, namely the manner in which flagship species act and have the capacity to galvanise and influence conservation outcomes. Drawing on concepts from the social sciences, viz . affordance, framing, and a…
Volatile Ecologies: Towards a Material Politics of Human-Animal Relations
Political ecology has had a long connection with materials, going back to some of its canonical concerns. Yet materials are rendered inert with no capacity to mobilize political action. Further, the influence of matter in wider ecologies of human-animal cohabitation is poorly acknowledged. This paper examines the role of materials in mediating people's relationships with elephants in rural northeast India. Drawing upon ethnographic research and e…
Bio-Geo-Graphy: Landscape, Dwelling, and the Political Ecology of Human-Elephant Relations
The relation between the bio and the geo has been amongst geography's most enduring concerns. This paper contributes to ongoing attempts in human geography to politicise the dynamics and distribution of life. Drawing upon postcolonial environmental history, animal ecology, and more-than-human geography, the paper examines how humans and elephants cohabit with and against the grain of cartographic design. Through fieldwork in northeast India, it d…
Flourishing with Awkward Creatures: Togetherness, Vulnerability, Killing
Giant isopods are one of the star attractions in the Toba Aquarium, Japan.Under normal circumstances these crustaceans live at depth on the cold, dark ocean floor, scavenging flesh from dead fish and whales.Their alien appearance, as well as the strangeness of their lives, instills a combination of fascination, fear, and disgust in the aquarium visitor.In 2007, one specimen-29 centimetres long and weighing just over a kilogram-was plucked from wa…
The hidden dimensions of human–wildlife conflict: Health impacts, opportunity and transaction costs
What is a conservation actor
As a crisis-oriented discipline, conservation biology needs actions to understand the state of nature and thwart declines in biodiversity. Actors-traditionally individuals, institutions, and collectives-have been central to delivering such goals in practice. However, the definition of actors within the discipline has been narrow and their role in influencing conservation outcomes inadequately conceptualised. In this paper, we examine the question…
Defining Flagship Uses is Critical for Flagship Selection: A Critique of the IUCN Climate Change Flagship Fleet
Whose Issue? Representations of Human-Elephant Conflict in Indian and International Media
The media play a key role in communicating conservation issues such as human-wildlife conflict, but corresponding literature on how issues are represented is limited. This article traces the depiction of human-elephant conflict in the media by examining (a) how conflicts are framed and (b) how ultimate and proximate causes are communicated in Indian and international newspapers. Issues were often polarized or framed in dramatic terms, and consona…
Ecological Basis of the Bihu Festival of Assam
Bihu is one of the most important festivals in the northeast Indian state of Assam. Published accounts of the festival mainly deal with its rituals, texts and performance, and its ecological setting is often overlooked. This essay seeks to explore the ecological basis of Bihu and tries to understand how it has assumed its form through an interaction of culture and ecology
Lively commodities and encounter value
Rendering nonhuman life for sale is a fundamental facet of contemporary capitalism. Political economy extensively examines how nature is commodified but fails to analyse the difference liveliness of animals makes to processes of commodification. Drawing upon empirical work on lions and elephants in the political economies of tourism and biodiversity conservation in India, this paper proposes analytics for understanding commodification and accumul…
Flourishing with Awkward Creatures: Togetherness, Vulnerability, Killing
Giant isopods are one of the star attractions in the Toba Aquarium, Japan.Under normal circumstances these crustaceans live at depth on the cold, dark ocean floor, scavenging flesh from dead fish and whales.Their alien appearance, as well as the strangeness of their lives, instills a combination of fascination, fear, and disgust in the aquarium visitor.In 2007, one specimen-29 centimetres long and weighing just over a kilogram-was plucked from wa…
Animating the urban: An Ethological and Geographical Conversation
Urban animals and their political ecologies constitute an arena of geographical scholarship that has intensified in recent years. Yet, little headway has been made in terms of understanding how sentient creatures inhabit and negotiate dynamic, metabolic environments. Focusing on urban macaques in Indian cities, the paper develops a conversation between geography and ethology. Firstly, the conversation provides insights into what urbanisation migh…
Bio-Geo-Graphy: Landscape, Dwelling, and the Political Ecology of Human-Elephant Relations
The relation between the bio and the geo has been amongst geography's most enduring concerns. This paper contributes to ongoing attempts in human geography to politicise the dynamics and distribution of life. Drawing upon postcolonial environmental history, animal ecology, and more-than-human geography, the paper examines how humans and elephants cohabit with and against the grain of cartographic design. Through fieldwork in northeast India, it d…
Volatile Ecologies: Towards a Material Politics of Human-Animal Relations
Political ecology has had a long connection with materials, going back to some of its canonical concerns. Yet materials are rendered inert with no capacity to mobilize political action. Further, the influence of matter in wider ecologies of human-animal cohabitation is poorly acknowledged. This paper examines the role of materials in mediating people's relationships with elephants in rural northeast India. Drawing upon ethnographic research and e…
Plantationocene: A Vegetal Geography
A Plantationocene is a threshold for understanding planetary change. Rather than attributing environmental transformations to the universal agency of humankind, a Plantationocene grounds the alteration of landscape in histories of colonialism and race, and takes the plantation to be a pivotal engine for producing novel but fraught natures. This paper develops a vegetal geography of a Plantationocene, engaging relations between plants and people a…
Encounter
Feral ecologies: The making of postcolonial nature in London
Through an ethnography of parakeets and other denizens in London, this article expounds the concept of the feral and foregrounds its purchase for an anthropological inquiry into urban life. Ecological, cultural, and political connotations of ferality impinge upon evaluations of what counts and is allowed to flourish as metropolitan nature. Ferality is constructed through nativist and racial taxonomies which promote a biopolitics of eradicating pa…
Defining Flagship Uses is Critical for Flagship Selection: A Critique of the IUCN Climate Change Flagship Fleet
Whose Issue? Representations of Human-Elephant Conflict in Indian and International Media
The media play a key role in communicating conservation issues such as human-wildlife conflict, but corresponding literature on how issues are represented is limited. This article traces the depiction of human-elephant conflict in the media by examining (a) how conflicts are framed and (b) how ultimate and proximate causes are communicated in Indian and international newspapers. Issues were often polarized or framed in dramatic terms, and consona…
Ecological Basis of the Bihu Festival of Assam
Bihu is one of the most important festivals in the northeast Indian state of Assam. Published accounts of the festival mainly deal with its rituals, texts and performance, and its ecological setting is often overlooked. This essay seeks to explore the ecological basis of Bihu and tries to understand how it has assumed its form through an interaction of culture and ecology
Ecological Basis of the Bihu Festival of Assam
Bihu is one of the most important festivals in the northeast Indian state of Assam. Published accounts of the festival mainly deal with its rituals, texts and performance, and its ecological setting is often overlooked. This essay seeks to explore the ecological basis of Bihu and tries to understand how it has assumed its form through an interaction of culture and ecology
Whose Issue? Representations of Human-Elephant Conflict in Indian and International Media
The media play a key role in communicating conservation issues such as human-wildlife conflict, but corresponding literature on how issues are represented is limited. This article traces the depiction of human-elephant conflict in the media by examining (a) how conflicts are framed and (b) how ultimate and proximate causes are communicated in Indian and international newspapers. Issues were often polarized or framed in dramatic terms, and consona…
What is a conservation actor
As a crisis-oriented discipline, conservation biology needs actions to understand the state of nature and thwart declines in biodiversity. Actors-traditionally individuals, institutions, and collectives-have been central to delivering such goals in practice. However, the definition of actors within the discipline has been narrow and their role in influencing conservation outcomes inadequately conceptualised. In this paper, we examine the question…
Defining Flagship Uses is Critical for Flagship Selection: A Critique of the IUCN Climate Change Flagship Fleet
The hidden dimensions of human–wildlife conflict: Health impacts, opportunity and transaction costs
Volatile Ecologies: Towards a Material Politics of Human-Animal Relations
Political ecology has had a long connection with materials, going back to some of its canonical concerns. Yet materials are rendered inert with no capacity to mobilize political action. Further, the influence of matter in wider ecologies of human-animal cohabitation is poorly acknowledged. This paper examines the role of materials in mediating people's relationships with elephants in rural northeast India. Drawing upon ethnographic research and e…
Bio-Geo-Graphy: Landscape, Dwelling, and the Political Ecology of Human-Elephant Relations
The relation between the bio and the geo has been amongst geography's most enduring concerns. This paper contributes to ongoing attempts in human geography to politicise the dynamics and distribution of life. Drawing upon postcolonial environmental history, animal ecology, and more-than-human geography, the paper examines how humans and elephants cohabit with and against the grain of cartographic design. Through fieldwork in northeast India, it d…
Flourishing with Awkward Creatures: Togetherness, Vulnerability, Killing
Giant isopods are one of the star attractions in the Toba Aquarium, Japan.Under normal circumstances these crustaceans live at depth on the cold, dark ocean floor, scavenging flesh from dead fish and whales.Their alien appearance, as well as the strangeness of their lives, instills a combination of fascination, fear, and disgust in the aquarium visitor.In 2007, one specimen-29 centimetres long and weighing just over a kilogram-was plucked from wa…
Rewilding: Science, Practice, and Politics
Rewilding is being promoted as an ambitious alternative to current approaches to nature conservation. Interest is growing in popular and scientific literatures, and rewilding is the subject of significant comment and debate, outstripping scientific research and conservation practice. Projects and research are found the world over, with concentrations in Europe, North America, and on tropical islands. A common aim is to maintain, or increase, biod…
A Theory of Flagship Species Action
The flagship species approach is an enduring strategy in conservation. Academic discussion on flagship species has focussed on two dimensions: on what basis should they be selected and how have they been put to use. Here we consider a third dimension, namely the manner in which flagship species act and have the capacity to galvanise and influence conservation outcomes. Drawing on concepts from the social sciences, viz . affordance, framing, and a…
Lively commodities and encounter value
Rendering nonhuman life for sale is a fundamental facet of contemporary capitalism. Political economy extensively examines how nature is commodified but fails to analyse the difference liveliness of animals makes to processes of commodification. Drawing upon empirical work on lions and elephants in the political economies of tourism and biodiversity conservation in India, this paper proposes analytics for understanding commodification and accumul…
Encounter
Animating the urban: An Ethological and Geographical Conversation
Urban animals and their political ecologies constitute an arena of geographical scholarship that has intensified in recent years. Yet, little headway has been made in terms of understanding how sentient creatures inhabit and negotiate dynamic, metabolic environments. Focusing on urban macaques in Indian cities, the paper develops a conversation between geography and ethology. Firstly, the conversation provides insights into what urbanisation migh…
Reconciliation Infrastructures
Drawing on a case of proposed ‘wildlife-friendly’ flyovers in Assam, Maan Barua attends to the politics of such ‘reconciliation infrastructures’ which contribute to the ongoing dispossession of rural inhabitants and allow capitalist expansion to continue unabated
Feral ecologies: The making of postcolonial nature in London
Through an ethnography of parakeets and other denizens in London, this article expounds the concept of the feral and foregrounds its purchase for an anthropological inquiry into urban life. Ecological, cultural, and political connotations of ferality impinge upon evaluations of what counts and is allowed to flourish as metropolitan nature. Ferality is constructed through nativist and racial taxonomies which promote a biopolitics of eradicating pa…
On Urban Photography: Infrastructure in a Minor Key
Does macaques’ use of hanging cables in Old Delhi point toward an urban arboreality? Maan Barua reflects on unforeseen ways of negotiating access to infrastructure among other-than-human lifeforms in the city
Plantationocene: A Vegetal Geography
A Plantationocene is a threshold for understanding planetary change. Rather than attributing environmental transformations to the universal agency of humankind, a Plantationocene grounds the alteration of landscape in histories of colonialism and race, and takes the plantation to be a pivotal engine for producing novel but fraught natures. This paper develops a vegetal geography of a Plantationocene, engaging relations between plants and people a…
Geography (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Biology (9 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (9 works) · Politics (7 works) · Environmental ethics (6 works) · Ecology (5 works) · Environmental resource management (5 works)