Sophie the Giraffe has been a popular teether since The giraffe has also been used for some scientific experiments and discoveries. Scientists have looked at the properties of giraffe skin when developing suits for astronauts and fighter pilots [52]: Computer scientists have modeled the coat patterns of several subspecies using reaction—diffusion mechanisms. The constellation of Camelopardalis , introduced in the seventeenth century, depicts a giraffe. Giraffes were probably common targets for hunters throughout Africa. The tail hairs served as flyswatters , bracelets, necklaces and thread.
Umm Nyolokh often contains DMT and other psychoactive substances from plants the giraffes eat such as Acacia; and is known to cause hallucinations of giraffes, believed to be the giraffes' ghosts by the Humr. Normally, giraffes can coexist with livestock, since they do not directly compete with them. Aerial survey is the most common method of monitoring giraffe population trends in the vast roadless tracts of African landscapes, but aerial methods are known to undercount giraffes. They may also have disappeared from Angola , Mali , and Nigeria , but have been introduced to Rwanda and Swaziland.
In , Jonathan Kingdon suggested that the Nubian giraffe was the most threatened of all giraffes; [4] as of [update] , it may number fewer than , although this estimate is uncertain. Private game reserves have contributed to the preservation of giraffe populations in southern Africa. It is the national animal of Tanzania, [] and is protected by law. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Giraffe disambiguation.
Angolan giraffes courting above and mating in Namibia. Generally, only dominant males are able to mate with females. Retrieved 23 December Retrieved 1 November Semito-Hamitic Festschrift for A. Retrieved 3 September Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases. Retrieved 23 November International Journal of Biology.
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Giraffa camelopardalis peralta Lokojya, Niger— Benue junction, Nigeria. University Of Chicago Press. Giffard in the northern territory of the Gold Coast". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. African Journal of Ecology. The Zoological Exploration of Southern Africa — Lake Eyasi, NW Tanzania. The Behavior Guide to African Mammals: University of California Press.
The Encyclopedia of Mammals 2nd ed. Giraffe Pages — in Walker's Mammals of the World. Its Biology, Behavior, and Ecology. The mammals of the southern African subregion. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa: Biochemical Systematics and Ecology. A natural history of giraffes. Society for Experimental Biology. Retrieved 7 May Grazers Britannica Guide to Predators and Prey. Journal of Sleep Research. Journal of Theoretical Biology. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution.
Archived from the original on 2 October Archived from the original PDF on 16 May Retrieved 2 February Vigilance as an Evolutionary Mechanism". The Anatomy and Physiology of the Mammalian Larynx. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A. South African Journal of Wildlife Research. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Microscopy Research and Technique. Ecology of desert-dwelling giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis in northwestern Namibia Ph.
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When Hippo Was Hairy: And Other Tales from Africa. Retrieved 6 November Journal of World History. Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques: Botswana Notes and Records. Sudan Notes and Records. Archived from the original on 15 December Retrieved 18 December M 11 January Giraffe Manor in Kenya". Retrieved 4 April Durant 8 June Retrieved 14 January Retrieved 30 October Retrieved 8 December Anhui musk deer M. Indian spotted chevrotain M. Sylvicultor Zebra duiker C. East African oryx O.
Family Bovidae subfamily Caprinae. Family Bovidae subfamily Bovinae. Family Bovidae subfamily Antilopinae. Bates's pygmy antelope N. Giant forest hog H. Palawan bearded pig S. Armiger Law of heraldic arms Grant of arms Blazon. Conventional elements of coats of arms Escutcheon. National coat of arms Arms of dominion Ecclesiastical heraldry Burgher arms Civic heraldry Canting arms Attributed arms. Dolphin Ged Lucy esox Scallop. Reremouse Bee Crapaudy toad Emmet ant Serpent.
Retrieved from " https: Julian—Gregorian uncertainty CS1 maint: Views Read View source View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikispecies. This page was last edited on 18 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Giraffa Brisson , Giraffa camelopardalis Linnaeus , Range map of extant Giraffa subspecies. Cladogram based on a study by Hassanin and Douzery.
The Kordofan giraffe G. Its spots may be found below the hocks and the insides of the legs. A median lump is present in males. In , all alleged G. Nubian giraffe including Rothschild's giraffe G. The Nubian giraffe G. West African giraffe G. The West African giraffe G. The ossicones are more erect than in other subspecies and males have well-developed median lumps.
The same study found that The West African giraffe was more closely related to the Rothchild's giraffe than the Kordofan and its ancestor may have migrated from eastern to northern Africa and then to its current range with the development of the Sahara Desert. The reticulated giraffe G. Spots may or may not extend below the hocks, and a median lump is present in males.
The Angolan giraffe G. The spotting pattern extends throughout the legs but not the upper part of the face. The neck and rump patches tend to be fairly small. The species also has a white ear patch. South African giraffe G. The South African giraffe G. The spots extend down the legs and get smaller. The median lump of males is less developed. The Masai giraffe G. A median lump is usually present in males. Thornicroft's giraffe " G. The Thornicroft's giraffe G. The median lump of males is underdeveloped.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Giraffa camelopardalis anatomy. Problems playing these files? Wikimedia Commons has media related to Giraffa. Moschus Anhui musk deer M. Hyemoschus Water chevrotain H. Then I am sure I must have changed many lives. My advice to you, is to develop strategies to minimize your emotional investment.
You need to clinically remove yourself, so you can see impartially. But listening is an embodied experience. It is meant to be exhausting and depleting. That is why it prompts you to work. Keep doing the work that will take you back to see where this will lead you.
No one likes to speak like this. Just keep reading and then tell them everything. Wesleyan University Press, , Teju Cole's provocation screen shot taken from Teju Cole's public Facebook page 91 There is growing literature on the experiences of researchers who work in uncomfortable settings such as war and disasters. Some have even argued that the focus on self-care is part and parcel of the neoliberal turn96 which seeks to localize the material and affective inequities and injustices of our times to our bodies and minds. Why is there an expectation that the study of chronicity should be safe?
Why is the researcher expected to walk out of the experience, only slightly unhinged, to be put back together by therapeutic interventions? Instead of just focusing on burnout, healing, trauma, it is also important to focus on heartache as a productive condition. This makes even more sense if we continue with the premise that data is a gift, an offering of corporeal generosity, that which moves us. The researcher in this configuration is someone who listens and receives deeply, someone who is attentive to heartbeats. In my opinion, the focus of the researcher is then not to merely create spaces of listening but bring into purview those spaces that already exist and learn their rules of engagement.
Listening and receiving deeply are one such rules of engagement. I consider listening deeply an embodied investment counter to my counsellor , as heartwork which requires the removal of all protective shields, bubbles, or bubble wraps. It is a state of considered vulnerability, a falling apart, the incommensurability of politics, a 94 See, e.
This allows for truer conceptual and written forms that better accommodate the willfulness and genres of life research interlocutors suggest, regardless of how this enhances or disrupts existing discourse. In my opinion, such a form of solidarity allows for more opportunity to minimize the epistemic harms perpetuated by research and to intercept lived and felt experience in ways that are generative, indefinite, and plural.
Researching within communities is inherently a disruptive process, the dangers are immense, and the discomfort is expected to be crippling and enabling- why should it be otherwise? Sometimes this will prevent us from working within communities that we are not a part of or have very little stake in, other times it will encourage us to make our interventions even bolder.
There is no easy answer, a clear this or that. The important thing is to allow the data to work on the heart: Society and Space, , http: University of Minnesota Press, What are the methods? Instead of a slavish devotion to any one method, Das advocates for an ethical stance of receptivity how we sense, perceive, and acknowledge the Other which cannot be reduced to any singular methodological framework. The lack of a guidebook, manual, or pathway does not make this easy. These are embodied forms of unease and awkwardness, such as when one attempts to use un-waxed floss: Denzin and Yvonna S.
What forms of vulnerable writing can emerge from such modes of being? Page believes vulnerable writing is not only that which reflects how the researcher is impacted during research but also reveals the fragility of knowledge assembly-as a form of receptivity and wounding. This unsettled uncertainty of the research process, rather than foreclosing on further understandings, provides space for new forms of unknowing and continued attempts at understanding the stories of others.
Duke University Press, Also see, Nishta J. This is work which extends far beyond the immediacy of the felt encounter. Who can say what will come out? Once as I was leaving his village, he reminded me: However, now I wonder whether he also meant to allow the experiences I had with him, sit with me in far richer ways. What if baba was asking me to hold onto his words as much and as far as I can? This involves developing new language and vocabulary to accommodate multiple genres of life, but also the realization of my own limits. I am not referring to ethics in an institutional regulatory way, but as an engagement with the ethical complexities of heartwork.
Similarly, should accountability to the reader be also considered an important component of the ethical framework of heartwork? It is in your hands. When you plan social change, you have to imagine the world that you could promise, the world that could be seductive, the world you could induce people to want to leap into. This led to a rather lengthy period of adjustment, where my ethnographic intrusions took a variety of shapes and forms to facilitate the kinds of telling my research interlocutors insisted upon. Stories never leave, they are meant to unsettle. Their very stickiness is homework and heartwork.
The process of knowledge generation is as important as the knowledge to be created. While the urgency and stakes of understanding violence and marginality are high, the accountability is low. I am not convinced whether faulty knowledges emanating from spaces of disruption which fragment, undermine, instrumentalize, parse, and diffuse subjects of violence are morally, ethically, or instrumentally any better than the very violence they seek to render visible. University of Chicago Press, , Heartwork is allowing yourself to become decentered by heartbeats. It includes never fully coming to terms with the betrayals implicit in working with people but yet learning to live with that ontological insecurity.
During the earlier days of my PhD, when I was struggling to put together a reading list for my comprehensive examinations, my supervisor suggested: This simultaneously opens up many ways to understand feminism and being Muslim, as generative sites of experimentation, a playground of sorts, and not as fragile assemblages of knowledge which need to be protected. Should more also be demanded from the reader? Like the author, the reader may or may not pose significant obstacles to the flourishing of the subject of research. The reader may accept the gifts of heartwork or they might reject it.
Upon receiving the gifts of heartwork, they may or may not say: By posing this question, the reader bounces the responsibility of receiving deeply back to the author, who is now cornered to clearly s-p-e-l-l o-u-t the contributions of heartwork, so they can be consumed in a rote like fashion without frustration, injury, and wounding. Heartwork is inconvenient, gritty, and uncomfortable, it is work on top of work. Fear is another impediment; the unsafety of tracing constellations and looking elsewhere, and the unpredictability and danger this brings.
Heartwork affords possibilities of doing research in ways that do not seek to conform to the expectations of the reader or any adjudicator of knowledge. The bird is in your hands we have to figure out how to be in this world, what to do with this mess of heartaches - that is on us. And not worrying too much about where all this will lead us. This is what I mean, when I say: How can one do that anyways, when the reader holds continual power over the author?
The author can only make an offering in the form of text, the reader has the power of choice: Or perhaps a better way to imagine this relationship is that of friction, the reader and author exist in encounter with one other, and the text is their battleground or chai stall or living room. Their relationship can be antagonistic, troubled, or perhaps that of friendship, caring, and accommodation.
However, my concerns are three-fold: And, 3 Why are both forms of accountability necessary, particularly in relation to heartwork and the minimization of epistemic harms? Heartwork is ultimately about accountability; the author to the text and to interlocutors, the reader to the text and to interlocutors, and author and reader to each other. My intention behind invoking the reader is to draw attention to each of these accountabilities and develop further language on them.
I should also point out that both the author and reader have their offerings, biases, and limitations, and neither is consistently righteous despite having moral evidence. Heartwork provides the resources to also love your reader. This is my modest attempt at being accountable to the reader and loving them. They are fairly self-contained but receptive to interlinkages.
Earlier, I wrote that the numbering of the scenes does not suggest chronology but simply implies quantity, yet I have numbered them sequentially in English but out of sequence in Urdu. These inconsistencies in form are also modest attempts to write against the progression of evidence building and theory generation, and to elaborate interconnection and interdependence in ways that are outside of the expectations of linearity and coherence. Of course, this is an impossible task, given that this is a text bound together as a book, or an electronic file, where one chapter follows the next.
Thus, despite my imperfect refusals of linearity and consistency, to function within these constraints, some decisions were made in their placement. How to acknowledge my hand in these arrangements which are both purposeful and purposeless? Well, I do not have a whole lot of profound things to say regarding how I have organized these scenes, on their sequence. But perhaps in this lack of profundity, lies some profundity?
For example, I placed scene six at the "end" because that was the first chapter I wrote. I thought instead of showing a progression of ideas and growing sophistication of writing style which comes with practice, it might be revealing to do the opposite, share what you wrote first - last. I chose to place scene one in the first slot because it is on landscape and the rest of the scenes are on my interlocutors, even though landscape is also an important interlocutor.
But the opening scene only focusses on one of my field sites Neelum, and not Siran , rendering this logic unsatisfactory. As for the scenes in between, I cannot adequately explain why I placed them the way I did, the impetus came from the gut and the heart. But when I did, they felt right, so they stayed. In quick succession, he flung both his loafers at the President, shouting: This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq.
He did not say anything; the shoe did all the talking. While President Bush ducked and dodged his assailant, I welcomed mine straight in the face. Other times I think a lot about the shoe. What compels people to fling things? In many ways, this text too is the work of complaint. It is complaint that stems from my biography, history, location, experience. Some will see me in these pages, others will not.
For the latter, I anticipate frustration. What is your location? How can the reader ever fully trust a text, if they do not know who wrote it? I have written myself as a character, next to landscape, next to Amal, next to Akbar, next to Chandni, next to Niaz, next to Sattar. I have placed myself in each of their stories in my narcissism, awkwardness, heartbreak, frustration, neuroticism.
For those who cannot see me, I promise I am here. Sometimes like a wallflower. Sometimes like the wind. Sometimes like an angry wasp. Neelum as sculpted and carved by the masculine gaze such as those of the nation-state and humanitarians - indicates closure. These mobilities are stitched in the material inconveniences and intimacies of daily life in the valley.
They are sustained by affective entanglements between human and more-than-human bodies constituting mutual processes of emplacement that are paradoxically unbounded and generative. In these movements and flows are analytical and philological opportunities to articulate fully formed visions of Kashmir.
But this necessitates the location of theory and methodology as mutually constitutive within our literary genres not outside of them to elaborate narrative writing as praxis. Zutshi argues that forced attempts at a territorial solution to Kashmir may in fact be counterproductive. The Magazine, July , www. Columbia University Press, Peter Berger and Frank Heidemann London: By foregrounding the power of bodies to counter maps and the intimacies which frustrate geopolitics, I seek to disentangle what it may mean to be Kashmiri from the epistemic violence of the nation-state.
Affective ecologies draw attention to how human and more-than-human relations are implicated in the reproduction of ecological, social, economic, cultural, and political formations. Daily life in Neelum is heavily reliant on its landscapes which are materially and existentially necessary for its residents and are sites where human and more-than-human relationships or ecology constitute processes of localization which are paradoxically unbounded and generative. Neelum is suitable for this work because of the gendered nature of life and mobility as in the Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps, trans.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak New York: Shands, Embracing Space Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, and Kerstin W. Based on ethnographic research in the Gurez Valley, Indian administered Kashmir, Bauer and Bhan urge us to note the very bodies and relations in which well-being gets invested. Cambridge University Press, Two years after the ceasefire, an earthquake devastated the region followed by massive flash flooding , opening the valley to intense humanitarian action.
If we understand Kashmir as fluid and heterogeneously lived, what understandings can emerge that are possible only by intimate and comparative area knowledge which considers Kashmir as a site of data collection and theory generation? These exist side by side newly constructed homes, shops, and guesthouses photograph by Nusrat Jamal Illaqa When I first got to Neelum, I noticed that the performative gestures of politeness which one gets used to in urban Pakistan were somewhat absent.
Research interlocutors would snap at me when offended, and even ask me to come back another day if they got annoyed by my presence. One day, slightly beaten and broken, I mustered the courage to ask Shahzad - my research assistant and resident of Neelum- why are people here so mean? He responds with much amusement: This is because you are in our illaqa territory. When we are in Islamabad [capital city], we may appear friendlier. We might smile at you, appear agreeable. But when we come back to Neelum, we become shair lions!
No one can harm us here, we are the badshah king of the land. This is intriguing, particularly for understanding belonging and attachment in ways that are not possible by a geopolitical understanding of citizenship and identity. Abrar, one of my research interlocutors, shares a story concerning some Pakistani tourists: I was leading a hike with these amir zada rich or privileged guests from Islamabad. One of them really had to pee. We were passing over a bridge over the Neelum river, when the guest exclaimed: Bharvay your wife is a whore!
This is Kashmir, and this is our water. How can we understand these intense emotional entanglements with landscape and the confidence these connections inspire? More importantly, how can we use these insights to advance understandings of Kashmir which exceed the current offerings of geopolitics? Hazrat Suleman was flying over this region with his trusted Jinn on duty. He looked down and noticed a sparkling, crystalline body of water. He asked the Jinn: The Jinn then inspired life in the region, shaping pahars and land. This is how Kashmir was created. Narratives such as this there are many others , are refusals against placing Kashmir in its current geopolitical emplotment.
They insist that Kashmir has its own historicity, a freedom of sorts. The skepticism towards Kashmiris is also shared by ordinary Pakistanis and not just by the military and its secret police. A Kashmiri student studying at a university in Rawalpindi explains: The slightest of slips can be construed by my classmates as an indication of disloyalty to the Pakistani state. A sign in a government office in Neelum photograph by the author Arrival Entry into Neelum resembles a heavily guarded border crossing.
Foreigners are not allowed to enter, Pakistanis are only tolerated as tourists, and only after elaborate security checks. I first arrived in Neelum in , to try to understand how residents negotiate chronicity - the confluence of multiple forms of violence- in their everyday lives. I wanted to understand social repair, how people enable the continuity life in some viable form despite being immersed in ongoing and overwhelming structures of constraint. Kashmir is romanticized, fetishized, and offers an allure of raw, untouched beauty, and clear blue waters.
Growing up in Pakistan, I was enthralled by the mysticism of Kashmir: Admittedly, my foray into Neelum as a researcher is indeed a problematic extension of decades of objectification and romanticization of the Kashmiri people by the Pakistani state and its citizens. I am no exception. Luker points out that research methods are not truths in themselves, but normative choices which are historically, socially, and politically located in both time and place.
I spent time with my interlocutors in a variety of ways: Harvard University Press, Sage, , The kitchen often generated the richest of conversations photograph by the author My presence in Neelum was nothing short of a spectacle. I asked baba, my host: Sometimes, I worry about you. In most other places that I have worked in e. In Neelum, this was not the case. Firstly, the topography was at times so intense, that I was physically unable to access certain spaces, community locations, and neighborhoods. Secondly, mobility within the pahars is gendered and particular, some routes are dedicated for women and children, others for animals, and 70 some for remaining villagers.
For example, tourists are expected to only stick to the main road or popular hiking tracks. Perhaps accentuated by its remoteness and the feeling of expansiveness, different rules were in place in Neelum regarding who is acceptable in the landscape and to what proximity to a community. Therefore, instead of relying solely on my body to explore and experience various lived spaces, and keeping in mind the limitations of my mobility, it made sense to make extensive use of photo-voice or participatory photography, allowing my research interlocutors to share only what they considered acceptable.
Therefore, this chapter as the rest of the text includes photographs which open Neelum for us in ways that my words cannot. Residents went out of their way to remind me of where I am, by pointing in the direction of Islamabad and clarifying: The LoC cuts right through Neelum, creating its own history and unique political entanglements. In , after a tense ceasefire between Pakistan and India, two bridges were inaugurated to link the valley across the LoC. Once a month, residents are permitted to cross on either side to reunite with relatives but only after elaborate paperwork and specialized travel documents.
Depending on the political climate of the region, some months the crossings are even closed. The bridges and the difficulties they pose - administrative specialized documents are required and temporal crossings only open certain time a year -further highlight the absurdity of the LoC. Those who are lucky enough to cross bring back objects, stories, and memories. Finally, in , after waiting for nearly 16 months for his documents to be The LoC is heavily monitored and guarded by the military on both sides. This comprises of a double row of fencing and electrified wiring connected to a network of motion sensors, thermal imaging devices, lighting systems, alarms, and land mines.
Is it any different from Pakistani Kashmir? This is Kashmir and so is that, I have merely come to the same home. Shahzad slightly annoyed, snapped back at me: It is difficult for me to say which is better, an overt assault on our political freedoms and social sensibilities [India] or betrayal and false friendships [Pakistan]? This adds to the thrill of visiting Neelum. Perhaps due to its geopolitical edginess or perceived remoteness, Neelum is considered as a space outside of the realm of morality and sexual governance.
While most tourists are either men or tidy families organized around heteronormative expectations, for some Pakistanis, Neelum lies outside the moral codes imposed on them by their citizenry. To mitigate this, guesthouses are required to check the marriage certificates of men and women travelling together. This practice is also enforced at various military and police checkpoints dotting the valley. Female tourists are particularly scrutinized and judged on their placement within or outside the heteronormative, state sanctioned familial unit. Those female tourists who are seen as being outside the family, such as perceived to be with their boyfriends, unmarried partners, or even with male colleagues, are particularly vilified for being corrupted and corrupting the women of Neelum.
A young male resident angrily pointed at a bus of university students: Look at the besharam larkyan young women without modesty. Look at the clothes they wear, tightly fitted shalwars trousers. They corrupt our girls who now want to follow similar fashions and behave in unacceptable ways around our men. A large number of humanitarian and development NGOs set up shop in Neelum after the recent disasters.
They too were very interested in women. NGOs have a bad reputation in Neelum. Within days their duppatas head coverings came off, and they would travel with men in big Pajeros late into the evening. This is the outcome of specific and situated social practices and gendered norms, consistent with what we know about the gender and the environment: I use the following series of photographs to further highlight this point.
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Maizescapes leading to a home photograph by the author Maize, the staple crop of the region, is grown in abundance in Neelum, typically around a homestead. It is usually hand-picked, the kernels are separated from the husk and stored in large wooden boxes. However, maize plantations provide more than just food and are equally appreciated for their dense networks and camouflaging ability. Qari Safir, the local Imam remarked: Women are expected to defecate only during daylight within the maize fields, very early in the morning, but men can go as they please outside of the time generally reserved for women.
Conversely, maizescapes are also considered to be sites of danger and harm, and are feared to harbor snakes, scorpions, and stray dogs, whose presence is amplified after sunset when visibility is greatly diminished. Women and young children are discouraged from navigating these maize plantations and, therefore, much of the landscape, after sunset. In this way, these maizescapes allow selective gendered mobilities and access to the land, safe enough to defecate in and traverse the village with during daytime, but dangerous enough to be harmful after nightfall.
A community installed and maintained bridge photograph by Shafiqa Butt The Pakistani state has minimal investments in infrastructure in Neelum. In response to this lack, in many places, residents have put in place their own micro-infrastructure such as the bridge pictured above. Bridges like the one pictured above dot the valley and offer some respite in the seemingly inhospitable terrain. Unique rock formations ideal for soaking and washing clothes photograph by Shafiqa Butt There are a few suspension bridges maintained by the Pakistani army at various strategic points in the valley, but these have more to do with providing the army with ready access to LoC as opposed to alleviating the daily inconveniences of topography.
The photographs above show useful rock formations near a stream which are amenable for washing and drying clothes. For example, the following photograph shows an oddly shaped rock formation, which serves as an identifier and even draws children to play in its vicinity. Even the streams and various smaller water bodies crisscrossing the villages changed their pathways, rendering some bridges useless, and creating the need for new ones. Land that was previously safe to live on became dangerous, and the fertility of the soil changed, opening new opportunities in some areas, and closing hope in others.
There were even shifts in the water quality of the Neelum river and the types and quantity of fish it sustained. These reconstructed pathways often took the form of a series of cemented steps crisscrossing the pahars, as shown in the photograph below. Like most humanitarian interventions, and under the pretext of vulnerability, women, children, and the elderly were considered the official beneficiaries for these initiatives. An NGO supported cemented pathway, this one is in reasonably better shape photograph by Rihana Tahir 83 Humanitarian intentions might be noble, the yearning to build community infrastructure through wider participation even commendable- but the cemented pathways reflect humanitarian desires of order, control, and technocracy more than anything else.
This is apparent just from the way connectivity is imagined and its ideals reproduced as infrastructure. The differences in NGO pathways above and those that exist otherwise see earlier photographs are not just reflective of a lack of technical and engineering skills but hinge on other considerations, such as what kind of connectivity is desired, by whom, and for what purpose? It rains and snows much of the year in Neelum.
The cemented pathways turn dangerously slippery under these weather conditions and residents find it safer to walk outside of them. I noted narrow pathways created by regular foot traffic crisscrossing the pahars, often adjacent to these cemented stairways. Not surprisingly, livestock and carrier animals such as donkeys and mules also find it incredibly difficult to walk on the cemented pathways even outside of the rainy season. Their upkeep requires monetary expenditure and specialized tools which communities cannot sustain. While connectivity between villages and even within villages from one house to the next is strained, efficiency and time are important considerations which are considered when choosing a particular route.
Often this means choosing the shortest route as opposed to the safest or easiest route. Cemented pathways do not necessarily adhere to this consideration of timeliness. I often chose the cemented pathway since they appeared easier to navigate. One day, a passer-by asked me in awe: Why are you taking this route to get to Sehri [a village]? This will take you over an hour.
Go from here, between these rocks, past the shrubs, across the waterfall—you 84 will get there fatafat immediately, at the snap of your fingers. It took me nearly 2. The humanitarians were keen to bring in engineers, foreign materials such as cement, and specialized tools to work towards a particular kind of built environment. Malis are grazing pastures and forests at dizzying altitudes which are collectively accessed by communities. Malis are not bounded geographies with a fixed address but refer to a conglomeration of ancestral spaces which offer increased access to resources, cool temperatures, and even respite from the male gaze.
During summer, women and children along with their livestock migrate to the malis. Men are usually not allowed to access the malis, though specific accommodations are sometimes made. The animals are fattened in the malis and the forests are combed for vegetables, mushrooms, and medicinal plants. On account of their altitude, the malis also provide respite from the summer heat. The safety advice they impart in their civilian trainings is to discourage residents specifically women and children from taking their animals on unfamiliar routes for grazing.
Per their records, hundreds of livestock die every year due to landmines and dozens of women and children either die or suffer from lifelong disabilities. The PRCS encourages residents not to venture into unchartered territories, and by doing so they are perpetuating yet another border within Neelum, which runs in parallel to the LoC. More-than-Human Bodies As my research interlocutors became more confident in our relationship, the nature of food I was served also shifted.
It went from the usual biryani and chicken karhai to more region-specific dishes such as locally sourced saags spinaches and mushrooms. The sugar in the tea changed from regular refined sugar to gur unprocessed brown sugar and the milk from Milkpack a very popular brand of pasteurized milk to unpasteurized, raw milk. I read this in two ways: And second, that local foods communicated a profound sense of pride, belonging, and rootedness which cannot be articulated through the language of geopolitics.
In this section I examine more-than-human bodies, such as edible 89 plants, mushrooms, and animals and how they open up landscape. Intimacies of food Hameeda, a resident of Neelum, only uses jangli payyaz for cooking which she handpicks from the malis. Hameeda dries them in the sun and stores them in little plastic containers for use during winter. I dislike the onions you can purchase from the bazaar which are trucked in from Pakistan. They have no flavor and they are grown using harmful fertilizers and chemicals.
Jangli payyaz smells of Neelum and tastes like Neelum. Jangli payyaz are found at dizzying heights and often in difficult to access and dangerous areas such as those prone to landslides - spaces which one would not consider accessing otherwise. Collecting jangli payyaz puts the body at tangible risk. They grow in small clusters and therefore large tracts of inaccessible landscape have to be carefully navigated for their sufficient collection. Andaza, another resident, speaks about shirley, a local variety of mushrooms also found in the malis.
They grow on specific trees and there is no guarantee that they will re-appear in the same spot they did last season. They are very delicate. I go to the malis with our animals [goats, cows], as they graze, I scan the forest for shirley. They must be collected within 3 days of appearing. Upon appearing, within days they ripen, it is at this point they have to collected or they dry out and are no 90 longer edible. Shirley are very delicate mushrooms, and women are invested in their protection over repeated trips to the areas where they were initially spotted.
Shirley draw the same bodies back to the landscape in relationships of care and anticipation. The interconnectivities and circulations of bodies in landscapes are also interlinked 91 with ideas of the social, how it is produced, maintained, preserved, and extended.
For example, the malis also have their own culinary traditions. Since animals have better grazing opportunities, they produce more milk. The shelf life of milk is increased by turning milk into lassi a watered yoghurt drink , bhagoray cheese curds , and ghee clarified butter. These are consumed in the beheks but also brought back to the villages where their circulation amongst friends, family, and neighbors creates and maintains kinship and closeness.
Since the malis are predominately accessed by women and children, they also serve as amenable spaces of interconnectivity and interactivity exclusively between women. Bhagoray cheese curds prepared in the beheks, these are fried in ghee with spices photograph by the author Women particularly senior women, such as the mother-in-law or grandmother take pride in growing vegetables. These practices not only directly emplace women within 92 landscape but also cement them to other people.
My dadi [paternal grandmother] has a passion for growing vegetables. She regularly tends to them and even takes her shoes off before entering the vegetable garden [out of respect]. She strictly instructs other to do the same. We often have surplus vegetables and regularly send cucumbers, potatoes [and other produce] to neighbors and family members.
Our neighbors and relatives do the same. My host interrupted my gaze: Livestock in particular are referred to as maal wealth , reflecting not only their status as assets but the value they bring to everyday life. Children often introduced me to their goats and told me their names. The act of naming implies love and attachment, perhaps formed as a result of large amounts of solitary time spent with animals.
As legitimate bodies in Neelum, animals are very closely intertwined with the opening and maintenance of illaqa. Since ambulatory animals such as cows and goats are also prohibited from crossing over the LoC they get blown away by landmines , they, too, are geopolitically restricted.
Additionally, migrations to the malis are intrinsically tied to the sustenance of livestock, who accompany their caretakers to benefit from unrestricted grazing pastures. She challenges conventions of flatness and acceptable topography by expertly operating on a slope photograph by Rihana Tahir 96 Image Different bodies work in the landscape to create routes and routines that do not depend on geopolitics photograph by Rihana Tahir 97 The two recent disasters that struck Neelum killed large numbers of livestock.
Despite the number of years gone by, most households have been unable to regain same levels of livestock as before. This means there is less and less incentive for households to invest their bodily labor and time in trekking to the malis. Several women reported that they no longer go to the malis since they only have a handful of livestock and it does not make much sense to trek all the way up. Instead, they now send their animals with a neighbor or someone else who has a bigger herd and pay them some money for their help. In this way, animals such as cows and goats both allow and deny movement of residents in their landscape, and therefore can expand or foreclose illaqa.
An elderly man resting with his cattle on the way back from the malis photograph by Farhat Shaheen 98 Animals help sustain the circulation of bodies within Neelum in ways beyond those afforded by infrastructure such as bridges and pathways. For example, the goats are slaughtered on special occasions, such as weddings and funerals, which draws relatives and friends from far and near. Therefore, goats and chickens as sources of food maintain familial and diasporic linkages.
The examples of various milk products whose production are increased by accessing the malis also speak to this. Animals allow humans to create and maintain modes of relationality which are difficult to sustain otherwise. Surprisingly, this also includes the creation of virtual communities.
A research interlocutor explains: My sisters often steal eggs from our chickens. Usually, they are the ones put in charge of collecting eggs, they often hide some for themselves. They sell the eggs in the bazaar and use the money to purchase credit for their mobile phones.
They then send text messages to their sahailees close friends. In fact, amongst Kashmiris themselves, there is ample diversity on visions for its future, ranging from a combative approach to accommodation and negotiation with India and Pakistan. Additionally, the uncertainty and irresolution caused by the LoC creates unique conceptual and material affects, which shape a collective Kashmiri identity.
A Magazine of Politics and Culture, October , www. Nusrat, my research assistant, who was in grade 5 when a ceasefire was reached between India and Pakistan recalls: We could now go out, freely roam the land, and just be. Neelum, like much of Kashmir is heavily mediated by nation-states, disasters, humanitarians, and other often masculine discourses.
Bodies in Neelum work in the landscape to create routes and routines that are disentangled from geopolitics and other prescriptive forces. The pahars and more-than-human bodies of Neelum generate unique affective and situated intimacies. These affective ecologies are very much tied to the production of illaqa by drawing residents back to the landscape or opening new spaces for bodily incursions, such as the remote edges of pahars where the jungle payyaz grows or the chicken eggs that allow young women to text their friends opening other kinds of virtual spaces.
The very circulation of bodies stitched within the materiality of everyday life such as washing clothes, collecting food, and grazing are forms of ambulatory emplacement which disrupt the geopolitical boundedness of territory. Remaining emplaced within Neelum despite ongoing conditions of colonial occupation - particularly restrictions to movement - is a powerful example of a life in the meantime, a pragmatic presentism, where life-work is diligently performed to achieve undefined, multiple, and possible futures. Living off the land and waterways in Neelum and understanding relationships with landscape as a conglomeration of public and private intimacies allows us to understand the bodily presence and circulation of residents in Neelum as the maintenance and extension of place, integral to ongoing struggles for Kashmir.
There are many forces that discourage mobility in Neelum. This includes numerous military checkpoints and landmines as well as the LoC itself. Based on self-serving commercial interests and technocratic understandings of nature conservation, there are also other kinds of restrictions on landscapes and waterscapes put in place by the Pakistani state. For example, fishing the Neelum river is prohibited as is collecting certain medicinal plants and mushrooms from its forests. Everyday life in Neelum challenges the notion of spatial homogeneity demanded by the Pakistani state and its borders.
As described previously, even the location of home is multiple, as is land ownership which is rarely consolidated into a singular spatial block. Oxford University Press, , Peterson Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, , New York University Press, These dispersed land-holdings are inherited, based in memory, and undermine spatial homogeneity, but also reconfigure how one understands proximity and distance, space, and landscape, as being unbounded, fragmented, dispersed, and varied.
Neelum has been cut off from Srinagar the cultural capital of the once unified Kashmir for decades. During my research in Neelum and its surrounding pahars including other valleys in the region which do not fall under the ambit of Kashmir , I noted similarities in terms of land-based lifestyles, migratory practices, and other forms of ecological knowledges and consciousness that stem from making life hospitable in the pahars as opposed to simply being Pakistani or Kashmiri.
The common language spoken in the pahari region Hindko also speaks of another shared similarity. Collectively known as pahari log as opposed to only Kashmiris or Pakistanis, people in this pahari region are united by a mode of life built upon reliance, respect, and attachment to landscape as well as the difficulties and dangers of doing so. Having no or limited access to Indian administered Kashmir being a Pakistani citizen, the practicalities of border-crossing are rather complex , I find it more compelling to understand Neelum as part of a heterogeneous Kashmir, defined by the intimacies of living in landscape rather than a historic configuration within a unified polity, knowledge of which is impossible for me to access.
I understand Neelum as a unique space, caught between allegiance to Srinagar and forced inclusion within Pakistan, and an everyday pahari way of life - a lived territory in its own right. The bakherwals are a nomadic group of people who raise livestock and move from one mali to another regardless of whether it is situated in Kashmir or Pakistan. Their large caravans can be seen defiantly crossing provincial and territorial borders. They have been raising livestock across the malis in Northern Pakistan and Kashmir long before the firming up of geopolitical borders indicating that connections and routes have always existed.
An understanding of Kashmir rooted in movement and flow, interconnectivity, intimacy, and landscape — pahari modes of life -can perhaps inspire new language which is generative and does not seek to constrain, constrict, or categorize. The question then is, should we invest our energy in rescuing old categories or developing new ones which better reflect our understanding of the world?
I am inclined towards the latter and find the analytical pathways opened by recent work on refusal more generative for my reading of life and politics in Kashmir than attempts to resuscitate sovereignty as a conceptual opportunity. Routledge, , Sara B. I often asked my research interlocutors: Some would retaliate with an even stronger provocation: Regardless of the hardships we face, this is our illaqa territory.
Even those who have left, eventually make their way back home. Landscapes are not just location -geopoints A and B - but agentive spaces which inform the aspirations, skepticism, and betrayals of life therein. They act upon and are acted upon by human and more-than-human bodies and are central to the stories of chronicity and social repair I seek to write. Let me offer an example: One evening, the small guesthouse in Neelum where I stayed it only has two rooms was suddenly filled by a large number of men. Within minutes, the courtyard was full.
As they waited for their leader to arrive, the caretaker of the guesthouse strongly suggested that I lock myself in my room and draw the curtains, as things could get rowdy. He suggested that for my own safety, I should not let anyone in. I did as I was requested. From my room, I could hear people clapping, possibly indicating that their leader had arrived. Shortly after someone started to speak on a loudspeaker, I heard hurried knocks on my door. I did not open as instructed. Eventually, the person gave up. But sooner or later, I heard another knock. After every 10 minutes or so, someone would want to get into my room.
Sometimes they would just knock, other times they would yell: I counted at least 10 different people wanting in. Later, I learnt, that participants of the rally needed to go to the bathroom. The bathroom in the other room was in a state of disrepair and only my room offered some hope.
By placing my safety and comfort at the center of the universe not sure if I would be comfortable letting strangers use my bathroom even if I had known , I was a material impediment to the internal political processes of Kashmir even if in a trivial way such as blocking the dignified gastric releases of political party workers.
I have always wondered why works of fiction on Kashmir are far more satisfying and enriching then their academic counterparts. Conversely, most academic writings on Kashmir remain stuck, apologetic, and underwhelming. Do I really need a dead white guy to help me understand Kashmir? When the resources to do so are right here: Their attachments, movements, and flows constitute genres of life, and the landscape acts as the stage on which these genres of life unfold.
My own ambulatory challenges in Neelum, how I struggled just to get from one place to another, provides me further evidence that the body in movement is indeed a site of data and theory, expressed through not just the navigation of the pahars, but also the investments made in the land and in food. Challenging the Consensus, May , http: The body in movement is a repository of data and theory photograph by Abdul Basit I would like to momentarily focus on my own body, its movement, flow and stasis , and how my sweat, tears, blisters, rashes, and bruises are also sites of knowledge.
In anticipation of my daily incursions, children would excitedly congregate on their rooftops and place friendly bets on how long I would take to get down, how many times I would stop to catch my breath, or drink water. I was certainly an important character in the drama of Neelum. The following excerpt from my journal walks us through my thinking: There is such little food to eat in general, but I am beginning to think if rejecting an invitation, refusing to eat after someone has gone through the trouble of preparing a meal, making chai, running to the bazaar to buy biscuits, or even cut up a cucumber is actually more damaging… and counterproductive to what I seek to understand in Neelum.
It means allowing yourself to be further enveloped by landscape, sociality, and experience. The home is an extremely private space and an extremely privileged site to which most strangers are not privy too. Can accepting an invitation to eat even within the context of scarcity be understood as a gift, a form of reciprocity, as method and theory generation? Shit, I think I had it wrong all this time. If we are really committed to understanding and articulating visions of Kashmir which are fully formed and realized, we must locate theory and methodology as mutually constitutive within our literary genres not outside of them to elaborate narrative writing as praxis.
Otherwise the rich textures and features of life and world will continue to evade our analytical purview. We have to find a new imagination. This applies to everybody, on all sides of the dispute. Something beautiful could come of it. Some days I am a feminist, some days I am queer, some days I am an ethnographer, some days I am an activist, some days I am an ally, some days I am a poser, some days I am an appropriator, some days I am a contrarian, some days I just stay in bed all day long.
More simply put, disasters radically reconfigure how people are put together and the expectations they place on one another. But also, because they can shift the very nature of these demands as life is no longer governed by the same boundaries. Understood this way, it is plausible to consider that disasters can catalyze conditions for letting each other down; they create, nurture, and amplify betrayal. Using the metaphor of betrayal, both as an embodied lived and felt experience as well as a shared affective and material social condition, I write about my interlocutor: Niaz, whose life in the pahari Northern Pakistan is further confounded by another form of betrayal, that of his body.
But Niaz does not attribute his most profound dysphoria to either the accident or the earthquake, but to the disloyalty of his best friend. In my attempts to understand intersecting forms of violence bodily injury, earthquake, social betrayal as chronicity, I approach disasters as a catalysis for other forms of social let-downs. Furthermore, I attempt to understand social repair as a process governed by its own willful genres of life and disarticulated futurities.
Faced with new forms of affective and material scarcity, social expectations may no longer be achievable. More importantly, disasters may reconfigure accountabilities altogether and demand new rules and matching forms of social and affective labor to sustain revised social standards. This assertion, in turn, raises compelling questions about protective structures such as the family, community, the state, and their in-sufficient roles in social repair and remaking in disaster aftermaths.
University of Nebraska Press, , 1. War and Democracy New York: Penguin Press, , Feminist theorists have also engaged with the notion of emotional labor though from a different vantage point. I attempt to do some of this work in the remainder of the chapter. This includes the artistic and theoretical genre of Afrofuturism. However, Niaz does not attribute his most profound dysphoria to either the accident or the earthquake, but to the disloyalty of a friend. Our conversations were punctuated by repeated references to this other protagonist and how his infidelity shattered Niaz in multiple ways.
Society and Space 34, no. Transgender Studies Quarterly 4, no. These were destroyed in the earthquake and have still not been repaired, causing further deterioration in his bodily abilities. Niaz responds with a shrug: Disasters also tend to highlight the longstanding injustices in society. These differences bear on the history of subject position and the historicity of subjectivity or the distinction between beings and meaning.
See, Michael Staudigl, ed. Phenomenologies of Violence Leiden: Michael Swirsky Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, Joy reminds us that the blanket-term of community obfuscates power relations. University of California Press, Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5, no.
Naelon links alterity with ethics and argues that ethics is constituted as an inexorable affirmative response to different identities, not through an inability to understand or totalize the other. Semiotext e , His criticality, reflexivity, and bluntness allow me to disentangle relations of power, decode social hierarchies, and notice discord and fragmentation in places which otherwise appear beautifully put-together. A Journal of Theory and Strategy 1, no. Niaz photograph by the author Worldings By worldings, I refer to lived and felt realities that reflect ontologies and genres of life through which relationships, knowledge, and beliefs are performed on an everyday basis.
This tension, a battle for legitimacy of whose reading of reality counts, permeates the writing of this chapter. Life in the Siran valley as in the rest of Northern Pakistan, is heavily contingent on accessing its pahari landscapes. Bodily labor, understood as the adroitness and agility needed to sustain life - collect food and firewood, hike down to the bazaar, work the fields- is the currency of survival. Sociality too, is contingent on overcoming the landscape, as sparse pathways and pahari trails do not significantly alleviate the precariousness of steep topography. Angeles, and Leila M.
Guess, Tavia Benjamin and Brian K. Niaz is precluded from embodying the landscape in these ways photograph by Ali Akbar Shah Image Men transporting dowry to the house of newlyweds photograph by Ali Akbar Shah Niaz is only able to traverse space and geography in their conventional sense via a wheelchair which he can navigate somewhat independently as long as someone can help him onto it. Niaz is stitched and localized to location. My body though intact in most ways was also rather ineffective in traversing the moutainscapes.
Many sites and locations were inaccessible to me and I had to rely on extensive local support to move from point to the other, often with the help of a hiking stick and sometimes even the guiding hand of a stranger. He explains how the clock helps him regulate the day and introduce variance in it: I live my life by this clock. In the morning, I get up, I look at the time and offer Fajr prayers [morning prayers at dawn], then I recite the Quran.
Shortly after, my niece brings me breakfast. I keep track of time, and just after lunch, my brother helps me on the wheelchair and I sit in the courtyard. I spend the next several hours reading the newspaper and my books, reading and writing. At 5pm, I return to my room, onto my bed. An attention to time, allows Niaz to prevent the finite limits of his physical world creep into the unorderly, routine defying properties of the stillness of time.
The clock, and abiding by it, allow Niaz to impose order and structure on his day, and create temporal rhythms to sustain himself. He muses on how time slows down during difficulty: Nowadays, the day feels very short but back then, I had too many worries. He keeps in touch with his brother who lives in Lahore and his relatives by speaking with them on the telephone, which offers intermitted service throughout the day.
In the evening, propped up with pillows in his charpoi string bed , he is visited by school children from the village who seek his guidance with their homework. He has also completed a primary teacher certification PTC. At that time, I was interviewing at a large phone company for an internship. During the interview, the hiring manager repeatedly asked if I can think of a recent event which changed the landscape of the telephone industry. I could not respond. I did not get the job and only later I learned that she was talking about the earthquake; how it opened an entire geographical region to telephone companies.
While Niaz is isolated from much of the grittiness of village life by virtue of physical participation, he is able to invite the world into his court yard. In the evening time, after the children leave, men neighbors, friends, family members can be seen congregating in his courtyard. In exchange, they bring gossip and news. Others visit Niaz for no specific reason at all, but as part of their daily routines and affective investments in Niaz as a friend or family member.
He helps us understand the world as not only a physically situated place. He also fills in an important social gap that of literacy in his immediate village. By not having a family of his own, Niaz feels he is unable to participate in any of these spheres of life.
He has a huge book selection which he keeps in a clear plastic bags in the store adjacent to his room. During the winter season, it is so cold in my room, that I stay fixed onto my charpoi. It is even difficult to take my hands out of the blanket to read the Quran. It is almost impossible to do wudu [ablution performed with water before a prayer can be offered], and when I pray by taking my hands out from under the blanket [he prays lying down or sitting up], it takes me another half an hour to get warm again.
During winter, Niaz essentially becomes a cocoon and finds it extremely difficult to fulfil his spiritual commitments. In the winter, I am unable to devote myself to either. Getting injured was a life changing event, but the injury will pass [I will recover]. The earthquake was also very difficult. But there is one person in my life, who has served as the role of villain. I can never forget what he did. Ahmed, currently a school teacher, was a close friend of Niaz: He would often come to me for help when he was doing his own PTC primary teacher certification course, several years before I started my own.
I would help him out where I can. During my own PTC course, I had an assignment to submit. Usually, I ask my brother to post my letters but that day it was heavily raining.