This doctoral dissertation research project investigates the ways in which notions of sacred landscapes are used to claim territory, and the effects of those processes on human-environment relationships. Struggles between indigenous communities and states over territory, environmental access, land use, and resource management take a number of forms, and are often situated within the growing global indigenous rights movement. Out of these struggles over human-environment relations, notions of sacred landscapes are increasingly mobilized as embodiments of ethnic identity and territoriality, yet the effects of such claims on human-environment relations within communities whose landscapes are reified as sacred remain unexplored. This dissertation project hypothesizes that mobilizations of sacred landscapes, in the context of highly politicized indigenous rights movements, reshape and redefine human-environment relations in important ways. Situated within a conceptual framework that draws on a theory of articulation, the concept of the production of space, and a political ecology approach, this dissertation research seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How are territorial claims articulated with global indigenous politics through notions of sacred landscapes?; (2) In what way does the production and reproduction of sacred landscapes structure indigenous identity and territoriality?; and (3) In what ways does this process (re)shape environmental access, land use, and resource management within a community? This project uses a suite of qualitative research methods, including focus groups and semi-structured in-depth interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis in a case study in Nepal. The research contributes to multidisciplinary literatures on indigenous politics, identity and territory, and religion. Further, this dissertation research works to bring critical approaches to religious studies into more traditional framing of the geography of religion in order to advance understandings of the role of that religion plays in human-environment relations and landscapes.
Beyond the intellectual and theoretical contributions of the research the findings of this project can influence national and international policy regarding sacred landscapes and indigenous communities. The project contributes to the training of students in Nepal who will be engaged in the project as research assistants. Results of the research will be disseminated locally in Nepal and at national and international academic conferences and via publications in scholarly journals. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising doctoral student to establish an independent research career.
