Anne Rademacher

When Is Housing an Environmental Problem? Reforming Informality in Kathmandu

Drawing on fieldwork among environmental activists and housing advocates in one of South Asia’s fastest‐growing cities—and the capital of one of the world’s most politically volatile nation‐states—this article explores how and when specific forms of urban housing were problematized and reformed through environmental logics. I ask when and how housing was framed as an environmental problem in Kathmandu. In so doing, I demonstrate that a fuller understanding of housing as an environmental problem rests not only in evaluations of public health parameters, risks of toxic exposure, and disaster vulnerability but also in the shifting ideologies of belonging, morality, and governance that animate urban environmental anxieties in specific cities. I illustrate how categories fundamental to the intersection of ecology and housing were produced, effaced, and reproduced over time in Nepal’s capital. I argue that the making and unmaking of these categories had clear material consequences that are often difficult to discern through global‐scale “slum ecology” logics. I suggest further that the moral and ideological dimensions of urban ecology are never predetermined or fixed and as such complicate global conceptions of housing as an environmental problem.

The Global Mobilization of Environmental Concepts: Re-Thinking the Western/Non-Western Divide

It is increasingly evident that the process of globalization is a more complex and conflicted one than has been thought to be the case. Former iconographic images of “one world” have come to be suspect (Ingold, 1993; Sachs, 1992), and predictions of the coming “global village” have receded in the face of increasingly prominent divisions between developed and under-developed countries, North and South, Western and non-Western (Huntington, 1996).1 The first challenge of global governance, as the debate over global warming has demonstrated, is not to coordinate solutions to global environmental problems, but to agree on a definition of the problem in the first place (Dove, 1994). An apparent irony of the globalization process is that at the same time as it erases some barriers and boundaries it constructs and crosses others. The simultaneous construction and destruction of boundaries is evident in the new and unorthodox alliances and oppositions that global mechanisms like the World Trade Organization have fomented.

Farewell to the Bagmati Civilisation: Losing Riverscape and Nation in Kathmandu

The Kathmandu reaches of the Bagmati River are widely characterised as severely degraded. This article explores the rhetorical life and death of the concept of a ‘Bagmati civilisation’: a particular configuration of history, cultural identity and river ecology espoused by a prominent Nepali river restorationist. Following the 2001 imposition of a state of emergency in Nepal, the architect of the Bagmati civilisation idea declared that the civilisation, and by extension the rivers ecological health, may never be restored. This rhetorical gesture illuminates connections between the ‘life’ of an urban riverscape and the cultural idea of the state and the nation.

From feedbacks to coproduction: toward an integrated conceptual framework for urban ecosystems

Research in urban ecology depends on frameworks that meaningfully integrate our understanding of biophysical and social change. Although the coupled nature of urban ecosystems is widely accepted, the core mechanisms we use to integrate the social and biophysical aspects of urban ecosystems – their social-ecological feedbacks – are poorly understood. This paper considers how feedbacks are used to conceptualize social-ecological change, noting their utility and their limitations. In so doing, we suggest that coproduction provides a meaningful alternative to feedbacks, one that captures not only the structure-function relationships usually assumed in studies of biophysical landscape change, but also the structure-agency relationships that facilitate our most comprehensive understanding of social change. By addressing both the stepwise forms of transformation that a feedback approach captures and the simultaneous forms of transformation captured by a coproduction approach, a more comprehensive assessment of the ways that social and ecological change take place is afforded. We contend that thinking in terms of coproduction is essential for moving beyond the interdisciplinary approach that usually guides urban ecology models, toward a more integrated, trans-disciplinary approach.

Inside Cuba: An immersive exhibition introduces visitors to the country's rich culture and biodiversity

An immersive exhibition introduces visitors to the countrys rich culture and biodiversity An immersive exhibition introduces visitors to the countrys rich culture and biodiversity

Restoration and revival: Remembering the Bagmati Civilization

List of Figures and Tables Preface and acknowledgements Note to the Reader Introduction - Arjun Guneratne 1. Downward Spiral? Interrogating Narratives of Environmental Change in the Himalaya - John J. Metz 2. Healing Landscapes: Sacred and Rational Nature in Nepals Ayurvedic Medicine - Mary Cameron 3. Perceptions of Forests Amongst the Yakkha of East Nepal: Exploring the Social and Cultural Context - Andrew Russell 4. A Forest Community or Community Forestry? Beliefs, Meanings and Nature in North-Western Nepal - Andrea Nightingale 5. Where Gods Children Live: Symbolizing Forests in Nepal - Jana Fortier 6. Clear Mountains, Blurred Horizons: Limbu Perceptions of Their Physical World - T. B. Subba 7. The Role of Religion in Conservation and Degradation of Forests: Examples from the Kumaun Himalaya - Safia Aggarwal 8. The Abuse of Religion and Ecology: The Vishva Hindu Parishad and Tehri Dam - Emma Mawdsley 9. Restoration and Revival: Remembering the Bagmati Civilization - Anne M. Rademacher 10. Beyond Cultural Models of the Environment: Linking Subjectivities of Dwelling and Power - Ben Campbell Bibliography List of Contributors