Call for Papers: Clarification

Call for Papers: 15th IALS Conference, Aberdeen, Scotland, 24–28 August 2011

Feedback from members after the Call for Papers was circulated seems to indicate some misunderstanding of the nature of the Conference, particularly its emphasis on a particular theme. As we tried to make clear in the original Call for Papers, we hope that the theme will be interpreted broadly, and will attract papers from a wide range of disciplines. To reinforce the point, please read the following clarification.

Responding to the Environment in Ladakh and the Western Himalayas

Throughout its history, the ruling powers, cultures and populations of Ladakh and the Western Himalaya have had to contend with difficult terrains, variable natural resources, and changing patterns of climate, disease and biodiversity, of which recent natural disasters such as this year’s Leh-area floods are merely one example. Both at a local and regional level, human responses to these changing conditions have helped to shape the society, economy and religions that we know today. Trade routes have shifted in response to shifts in rivers, the availability of passes and the vagaries of local climate. Villages and towns have expanded, contracted and been extinguished in response to the availability (or over-abundance) of water and the possibilities of agriculture and nomadism. Royal families, governments and religious and medical institutions have responded to the needs of populations struck by diseases, floods and earthquakes as much as they have to the possibilities of new products and trading conditions. These responses have included everything from the performance of rituals for both wealth and adversity, the development of medical institutions and practices, the provision of tax breaks, the negotiation of treaties and the siting and architecture of towns, palaces, and monasteries. In more recent times, the protection of archaeological and art-historical treasures have also focused minds on the questions of the region’s distinctive climatic conditions.

As well as being a standard IALS meeting with its usual range of papers, the 2011 conference in Aberdeen wishes to encourage participants to focus their regional expertise on the broad questions of (i) the actual nature and conditions of environment and landscape that influence life in the region, and (ii) how people respond and have responded to a changing and often extreme climate and landscape, at a social, economic, religious and political level.

In this regard, the conference can include papers aimed at understanding this issue in three frames: firstly, the historical frame; secondly, the conditions and responses presently at work in the region; and thirdly, the possibilities for the future. It is envisaged that addressing this issue in its fullness will require expertise from all fields of academic study— anthropology, archaeology, art-history, epidemiology, history, hydrology, medicine, political science, religious studies, sociology —whilst also maintaining that distinctive interaction between international and local perspectives and scholarship that is, and always has been the hallmark of the International Association for Ladakh Studies.