Jan Karlach (KCL) -- “Science scared the ghosts away”: the Nuosu-Yi and environmental protection
Channel: Nathan Hill
Date: 2024-02-03

“Science scared the ghosts and spirits away”: mountain worship, catastrophe prevention and environmental protection among the Nuosu-Yi of Liangshan

Jan Karlach (King's College London)

Previously geographically and politically isolated, during the last three decades the mountainous area of Liangshan lying in the southwestern part of Sichuan Province and inhabited by the ethnic Nuosu-Yi underwent a series of unprecedented changes. In recent years, the Chinese state-driven poverty alleviation campaign facilitated a massive transformation of infrastructure and dwellings. The modernization push of the state not only caused a shift in the local Nuosu-Yi thinking about their environment but also brought numerous environmental challenges. The present talk focuses on the practices of mountain worship across Liangshan and the ongoing disentanglement of the local indigenous knowledge from the environmental protection policies. The ethnographic data reveal a remarkable paradox. While the state is finally willing to draw on the indigenous local knowledge for its implementation of scientific environmental protection, the cosmological visions of the Nuosu-Yi inhabitants keep shifting away from its traditional concepts as they give way to the Chinese economic development.

Jan Karlach is a research associate at the COSMOVIS project, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King’s College London. He focuses on the Nuosu-Yi of Southwest China, their cosmology, the construction of their historical as well as their contemporary identity, and their negotiations of Chinese state-driven modernity in different areas, from poverty alleviation and environmental protection to the internet.