In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with Arati Kumar Rao who describes herself as a chronicler of landscapes - of both biodiversity as well as livelihoods using all the storytelling tools she has at her disposal - from photographs to writing to sketching. She is based out of Bengaluru, India. We speak about her enduring love for literature, writing, photography, and drawing and how that love translated into the work she does today. We talk of some of the stories from her experiences of chronicling landscape change across India and elsewhere that have stayed with her, and given her a sense of hope or despair as she navigates her own personal identity against those of the people she talks about. We speak of a particular historically practised form of rainwater harvesting in the deep Thar desert - the Khadeen - that is over 700 years old, and is intimately connected to agrarian practices in the region. We discuss the need to break down silos that exist across different disciplines or practice and to speak both to and across the social as well as the scientific stories of a landscape and how they need to be inclusive of the people that live and experience those stories in their daily lives. We speak about feeling the land with all of one’s senses and how that is different from zooming across it in a vehicle, linking those ideas to the privilege that comes from being an ‘other’ who studies people and livelihoods with the freedom of leaving that landscape and going back to the privilege we came from. Yet with the notion that we are not separate from what’s happening around us. We end with a discussion on the multilayered and deep rooted patriarchy that a woman encounters when leading a traveller’s lifestyle, both from within the communities she engages with, as well as the community she comes back to.
Arati’s website: https://www.aratikumarrao.com/about
In Arati’s own words, here is the story of the Khadeen: https://www.peepli.org/stories/miracle-of-sky-river/
She is also to found documenting stories of change on her Instagram handle: @aratikumarrao
125: Boundary spanning with Stephen Posner
124: Social capital and community resilience with Daniel Aldrich
123: Co-production and creativity with Josie Chambers
FFM #3: Mapping coastal fisheries with Paige Roberts
122: Decolonizing Conservation with Mathew Mabele
FFM #2: Reality-based fisheries policy with Bubba Cook
121: An end-of-year pod with the editors of the International Journal of the Commons
120: Land use, agriculture and the anthropocene with Billie Turner II
119: The Duty to Consult with Victoria A. Bikowski
FFM #1: Ocean policy with Elizabeth Mendenhall
118: Using games to teach about collective action and the commons with Eric Klopfer
Insight Episode #54: Dan Holland
Insight Episode #53: Dan Brockington on the myth of fortress conservation
Science and Practice #13: Land Conservation with Peter Stein
117: Coral reefs and collaborative science with Joshua Cinner
Insight Episode #52: Erin O’Donnell on the rights of nature
Insight Episode #51: Kaitlin Cordes on coffee and commodity chains
116: Stewardship salons and social science in the US Forest Service with Lindsay Campbell
115: Complex landscape mosaics and the paradox of pastoral tenure with Lance Robinson
Science and practice #12: Nature-based solutions with Margot Clarvis
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Poetry of Science
Behavioral Grooves Podcast
Hidden Brain
The Science of Happiness
The Psychology Podcast