Bengt G Karlsson
Biographic Data
| ID | 84571 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bengt G Karlsson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bengt G |
| FAMILY NAME | Karlsson |
| SIGNATURE | KARLSSON B G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stockholm University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7818-7045 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 116 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Maintaining monoculture
This paper addresses the day-to-day work to maintain monoculture in the context of tea plantations in former British colonies. In doing so, I seek to bring modern agriculture pursuits in conversation with research and policy work concerning biodiversity. While land-use change through intensive, industrial agriculture is identified as a major driver of biodiversity loss, the ongoing, everyday forms of elimination built into the plantation form is …
The plantation running wild
Why coffee and not tea? Both crops were introduced to Papua New Guinea in the early 20th century. While coffee has thrived, tea followed a rougher trajectory, and most tea fields and plantations are now abandoned. In this photo-essay I recount a short field trip that traces tea’s story in the Mount Hagen Highlands. The visit forms part of a larger endeavour to follow the tea plant from the Himalayan foothills to various parts of the former Britis…
Miracle millets
Dealing with Biodiversity Dilemmas in Ordinary Places
The battle against invasive alien species (IAS) rages on, and is being driven by recently articulated global biodiversity agendas. While the current United Nations Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) seeks to ensure pristine, protected areas comprise 30 percent of the world's total surface area by 2030, there remains much to be done for the remaining 70 percent, areas dominated by human habitat and industrial activities. Many non-native species h…
Resurgent diversity
Destroying one’s own home
This article is part of a Book Forum review of Sanjib Baruah’s book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (2020). The Book Forum consists of individual commentaries on this text by five interested scholars, followed by a response by the author. The article may be read individually or alongside the other contributions to the Forum, which together constitute a comprehensive discussion of the themes and arguments in the book
The imperial weight of tea
The cultivation of tea has had major impact on societies and environments across the world. It has been the cause of imperial wars, colonial appropriations of territories and capitalist exploitation of people and ecologies. In this article, I am particularly concerned with the British empire of tea, what preceded it and its afterlife in the former colonies. Research on tea within the social sciences and humanities have mainly concentrated on the …
Light Skin and Soft Skills
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
Bonnie Guest House
In anthropology, then, we go to study with people. And we hope to learn from them. – Tim Ingold, 2013 Age, fame, spectacular experiences and things out of the ordinary usually call for legitimate autobiographical introspection. None of these applies here. It is instead the present book project that gives me an excuse and an opportunity to recollect my journeys in the part of the world we know as Northeast India. For me, this is still an unfolding…
After Political Ecology
This book review article probes present anthropological engagement with the environment through the prism of political ecology, placing political ecology in conversation with newer work in environmnetal anthropology. In situating this conversation, the reviewer draws on four recent anthropological monographs that, in one way or another, deal with aspects of ‘nature’. The four monographs are Tania Murray Li's (2014) Land's end: Capitalist relation…
Geographies of Difference
Wayfinding
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
Fluid attachments in Northeast India
This introduction presents the context and theoretical basis of fluidity of attachments in Northeast India. A large cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity, an international border situation, and various forms of unsettled relations with ‘mainstream India’ characterize Northeast India. These aspects form the frame of highly dynamic movements of identity and ethnicity formation. This special issue includes five papers that focus on these dynami…
Political Ecology
Climate change, phenology, and butterfly host plant utilization
Knowledge of how species interactions are influenced by climate warming is paramount to understand current biodiversity changes. We review phenological changes of Swedish butterflies during the latest decades and explore potential climate effects on butterfly-host plant interactions using the Orange tip butterfly Anthocharis cardamines and its host plants as a model system. This butterfly has advanced its appearance dates substantially, and its m…
Indigeneity in India
Writing development (Respond to this article at http
Development professionals spend a lot of time writing and the aid industry has a vast production of texts. The author argues here that anthropology of development needs to look anew at how these texts are being produced, circulated and the purposes they serve. I have briefly identified six features of development writing: 1. Institutional ownership, 2. multiple authorship, 3. impersonal style, 4. terminology, 5. Communicable simplifications and 6…
The social life of categories
In this article I examine the ways in which the term "indigenous peoples" is reworked in a specific South Asian context. I focus on the new, hybrid category of "indigenous tribe" in the Indian state of Meghalaya. I argue that we can think of the indigenous tribe category as a strategic conflation of two different regimes of rights or political assertions. The first relates to the existing nation-state framework for affirmative action as expressed…
Unruly Hills
The questions that inspired this study are central to contemporary research within environmental anthropology, political ecology, and environmental history: How does the introduction of a modern, capitalist, resource regime affect the livelihood of indigenous peoples? Can sustainable resource management be achieved in a situation of radical commodification> of land and other aspects of nature? Focusing on conflicts relating to forest management, …
Anthropology and the 'Indigenous Slot
This article examines the present mobilization of indigenous peoples in India and their assertions of indigeneity at the United Nations. The notion of 'indigenous peoples' is highly controversial in India, and both the government and leading social scientists/anthropologists claim that it is neither possible nor desirable to single out any such category of peoples in the country. Above all, the fear is that the indigenous rights' agenda will lead…
Indigenous politics
This paper deals with a number of questions relating to politics based on “ethnicity” or community belonging among “tribal” or indigenous peoples in India's northeastern region. In particular, I probe the complex question of indigenous peoples’ right to self‐determination, a right that most indigenous organizations in the world regard as crucial and that is central to the UN draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Autonomy or self‐…
Anthropology and the 'Indigenous Slot
This article examines the present mobilization of indigenous peoples in India and their assertions of indigeneity at the United Nations. The notion of 'indigenous peoples' is highly controversial in India, and both the government and leading social scientists/anthropologists claim that it is neither possible nor desirable to single out any such category of peoples in the country. Above all, the fear is that the indigenous rights' agenda will lead…
Light Skin and Soft Skills
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
The imperial weight of tea
The cultivation of tea has had major impact on societies and environments across the world. It has been the cause of imperial wars, colonial appropriations of territories and capitalist exploitation of people and ecologies. In this article, I am particularly concerned with the British empire of tea, what preceded it and its afterlife in the former colonies. Research on tea within the social sciences and humanities have mainly concentrated on the …
Wayfinding
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
Indigenous politics
This paper deals with a number of questions relating to politics based on “ethnicity” or community belonging among “tribal” or indigenous peoples in India's northeastern region. In particular, I probe the complex question of indigenous peoples’ right to self‐determination, a right that most indigenous organizations in the world regard as crucial and that is central to the UN draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Autonomy or self‐…
The social life of categories
In this article I examine the ways in which the term "indigenous peoples" is reworked in a specific South Asian context. I focus on the new, hybrid category of "indigenous tribe" in the Indian state of Meghalaya. I argue that we can think of the indigenous tribe category as a strategic conflation of two different regimes of rights or political assertions. The first relates to the existing nation-state framework for affirmative action as expressed…
Fluid attachments in Northeast India
This introduction presents the context and theoretical basis of fluidity of attachments in Northeast India. A large cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity, an international border situation, and various forms of unsettled relations with ‘mainstream India’ characterize Northeast India. These aspects form the frame of highly dynamic movements of identity and ethnicity formation. This special issue includes five papers that focus on these dynami…
Climate change, phenology, and butterfly host plant utilization
Knowledge of how species interactions are influenced by climate warming is paramount to understand current biodiversity changes. We review phenological changes of Swedish butterflies during the latest decades and explore potential climate effects on butterfly-host plant interactions using the Orange tip butterfly Anthocharis cardamines and its host plants as a model system. This butterfly has advanced its appearance dates substantially, and its m…
Miracle millets
Resurgent diversity
Destroying one’s own home
This article is part of a Book Forum review of Sanjib Baruah’s book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (2020). The Book Forum consists of individual commentaries on this text by five interested scholars, followed by a response by the author. The article may be read individually or alongside the other contributions to the Forum, which together constitute a comprehensive discussion of the themes and arguments in the book
Indigenous politics
This paper deals with a number of questions relating to politics based on “ethnicity” or community belonging among “tribal” or indigenous peoples in India's northeastern region. In particular, I probe the complex question of indigenous peoples’ right to self‐determination, a right that most indigenous organizations in the world regard as crucial and that is central to the UN draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Autonomy or self‐…
Anthropology and the 'Indigenous Slot
This article examines the present mobilization of indigenous peoples in India and their assertions of indigeneity at the United Nations. The notion of 'indigenous peoples' is highly controversial in India, and both the government and leading social scientists/anthropologists claim that it is neither possible nor desirable to single out any such category of peoples in the country. Above all, the fear is that the indigenous rights' agenda will lead…
Unruly Hills
The questions that inspired this study are central to contemporary research within environmental anthropology, political ecology, and environmental history: How does the introduction of a modern, capitalist, resource regime affect the livelihood of indigenous peoples? Can sustainable resource management be achieved in a situation of radical commodification> of land and other aspects of nature? Focusing on conflicts relating to forest management, …
Indigeneity in India
Writing development (Respond to this article at http
Development professionals spend a lot of time writing and the aid industry has a vast production of texts. The author argues here that anthropology of development needs to look anew at how these texts are being produced, circulated and the purposes they serve. I have briefly identified six features of development writing: 1. Institutional ownership, 2. multiple authorship, 3. impersonal style, 4. terminology, 5. Communicable simplifications and 6…
The social life of categories
In this article I examine the ways in which the term "indigenous peoples" is reworked in a specific South Asian context. I focus on the new, hybrid category of "indigenous tribe" in the Indian state of Meghalaya. I argue that we can think of the indigenous tribe category as a strategic conflation of two different regimes of rights or political assertions. The first relates to the existing nation-state framework for affirmative action as expressed…
Political Ecology
Climate change, phenology, and butterfly host plant utilization
Knowledge of how species interactions are influenced by climate warming is paramount to understand current biodiversity changes. We review phenological changes of Swedish butterflies during the latest decades and explore potential climate effects on butterfly-host plant interactions using the Orange tip butterfly Anthocharis cardamines and its host plants as a model system. This butterfly has advanced its appearance dates substantially, and its m…
Fluid attachments in Northeast India
This introduction presents the context and theoretical basis of fluidity of attachments in Northeast India. A large cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity, an international border situation, and various forms of unsettled relations with ‘mainstream India’ characterize Northeast India. These aspects form the frame of highly dynamic movements of identity and ethnicity formation. This special issue includes five papers that focus on these dynami…
Geographies of Difference
Wayfinding
In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian ‘exotic Asian’ appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position con…
Bonnie Guest House
In anthropology, then, we go to study with people. And we hope to learn from them. – Tim Ingold, 2013 Age, fame, spectacular experiences and things out of the ordinary usually call for legitimate autobiographical introspection. None of these applies here. It is instead the present book project that gives me an excuse and an opportunity to recollect my journeys in the part of the world we know as Northeast India. For me, this is still an unfolding…
After Political Ecology
This book review article probes present anthropological engagement with the environment through the prism of political ecology, placing political ecology in conversation with newer work in environmnetal anthropology. In situating this conversation, the reviewer draws on four recent anthropological monographs that, in one way or another, deal with aspects of ‘nature’. The four monographs are Tania Murray Li's (2014) Land's end: Capitalist relation…
Light Skin and Soft Skills
In a recruitment centre in Dimapur, Nagaland, indigenous youth are trained for employment as service personnel in luxury hotels, restaurants and airlines. Most of them are unemployed, seeking new future prospects outside the region and the harsh existence of subsistence agriculture. English language skills, a general cosmopolitan outlook and their fair complexion have proven key assets in securing work within the new hospitality industry. In this…
The imperial weight of tea
The cultivation of tea has had major impact on societies and environments across the world. It has been the cause of imperial wars, colonial appropriations of territories and capitalist exploitation of people and ecologies. In this article, I am particularly concerned with the British empire of tea, what preceded it and its afterlife in the former colonies. Research on tea within the social sciences and humanities have mainly concentrated on the …
Destroying one’s own home
This article is part of a Book Forum review of Sanjib Baruah’s book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (2020). The Book Forum consists of individual commentaries on this text by five interested scholars, followed by a response by the author. The article may be read individually or alongside the other contributions to the Forum, which together constitute a comprehensive discussion of the themes and arguments in the book
Dealing with Biodiversity Dilemmas in Ordinary Places
The battle against invasive alien species (IAS) rages on, and is being driven by recently articulated global biodiversity agendas. While the current United Nations Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) seeks to ensure pristine, protected areas comprise 30 percent of the world's total surface area by 2030, there remains much to be done for the remaining 70 percent, areas dominated by human habitat and industrial activities. Many non-native species h…
Resurgent diversity
The plantation running wild
Why coffee and not tea? Both crops were introduced to Papua New Guinea in the early 20th century. While coffee has thrived, tea followed a rougher trajectory, and most tea fields and plantations are now abandoned. In this photo-essay I recount a short field trip that traces tea’s story in the Mount Hagen Highlands. The visit forms part of a larger endeavour to follow the tea plant from the Himalayan foothills to various parts of the former Britis…
Miracle millets
Maintaining monoculture
This paper addresses the day-to-day work to maintain monoculture in the context of tea plantations in former British colonies. In doing so, I seek to bring modern agriculture pursuits in conversation with research and policy work concerning biodiversity. While land-use change through intensive, industrial agriculture is identified as a major driver of biodiversity loss, the ongoing, everyday forms of elimination built into the plantation form is …
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Indigenous (10 works) · Geography (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (8 works) · Biology (7 works) · Ecology (7 works) · Law (7 works)