A talk by Dr Ambika Aiyadurai, Assistant Professor, IIT Gandhinagar on The 'social' in Wildlife Conservation: Key debates and way forward

Date: Oct 21, 2021 | Time: 1:00 PM | Venue/Mode: Conference Hall, MCB Building, Cotton University

This talk will be based on Dr Ambika Aiyadurai's monograph 'Tigers are our Brothers: Anthropology of Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India'. It critically engages in debates of wildlife science, conservation and its impact on the lives of Idu Mishmi. The Idu Mishmi people of Dibang Valley believe that tigers are their elder brothers. Killing tigers is, for the Idu Mishmi, a taboo. While their beliefs support wildlife conservation, they also offer a critique of the dominant mode of nature protection. Her book places the experience of local communities at the centre of a global network of cultural, economic, and political tensions to contribute to our understanding of human-non-human relations. Much of this work is an attempt to make the 'invisibilized social' visible in conservation science and research.