Presence of Elephants

<p>How to dwell in a forest alongside giants avoid disturbing a living god assist an animal with their manners and help an elephant cross the road. <em>The Presence of Elephants</em> is an anthropological consideration of coexistence grounded in people’s everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam Northeast India this book examines human–elephant copresence and how minds tasks identities and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions asymmetries and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect.</p><p>Developing a multifaceted picture of human–elephant relations in a postcolonial setting each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter where elephants adapt to human norms people are subject to elephant projects and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human–elephant relations felt through the elephant’s power to disrupt and transform human lives as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human–animal relations environmental humanities conservation and South Asian studies.</p>