Floating Economies: The Cultural Ecology of the Dal Lake in Kashmir, India

Product Description In the Himalayas of the Indian part of Kashmir three communities depend on the ecology of the Dal lake: market gardeners, houseboat owners and fishers. Floating Economies describes for the first time the complex intermeshing economy, social structure and ecology of the area against the background of history and the present volatile socio-political situation. Using a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, the author deals with the socioeconomic strategies of the communities whose livelihoods are embedded here and analyses the ecological condition of the Dal, and the reasons for its progressive degradation. Review “…an authoritative, richly detailed, lavishly illustrated study….Recommended.”• Choice“A unique, erudite and engaging study of local lives on and around the Dal Lake in Kashmir away from the violence that we hear about so much in news channels before the military crackdown and blackout of 2019.”• Raminder Kaur, University of Sussex About the Author Michael J. Casimir is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Cologne. His major publications include Growing up in a Pastoral Society: Socialisation among Pashtu Nomads in Western Afghanistan (Hundt Druck, 2010) and Culture and the Changing Environment: Uncertainty, Cognition and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective (ed. Berghahn, 2008).