Papers & Chapters by Willem van Schendel
Humanimalia, 2024
This article argues for an interspecies methodology to challenge
the human-derived spatial and t... more This article argues for an interspecies methodology to challenge
the human-derived spatial and temporal constructs that underpin most
historical narratives. It also seeks to qualify the entrenched dichotomy
between wildness and domestication. To this end, we focus on the interaction
between humans and “mithuns” (Bos frontalis), bulky bovines endemic in the
mountain forests of the eastern Himalayas. In this large region — covering
parts of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China — numerous societies
attuned their cultural sensibilities and cosmological assumptions to the same
animal. This remarkable feat of cultural convergence attests to the unwitting
power that a semi-wild bovine exerted over generations of humans — a
fact that environmental historians can incorporate into their analyses of
interspecies agency.
The significance of mithuns to humans had nothing to do with their livestock
potential. They were sacred animals that humans needed to communicate
with supernatural forces. The form that this communication took was
ceremonial sacrifice. During the twentieth century, however, mithun–human
relationships morphed into a new sacrality of place, ethnic identity, regional
belonging, and political resistance. This transformation suggests the need for
an “interspecies periodization” that takes human-nonhuman temporalities
seriously. As most of these societies historically did not use script, written
evidence is not plentiful. Therefore, Indigenous forms of knowledge
production about the environmental past — embedded in songs, stories,
dances, rituals, material remains, dress, and sculptural art — are of paramount
importance. These shaped human behaviour towards mithuns in the past, and
they continue to do so today.
Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power, 2023
Multi-species history, environmental humanities, Anthropocene studies and robotics all challenge ... more Multi-species history, environmental humanities, Anthropocene studies and robotics all challenge core notions underlying labour history, such as ‘work’, ‘labour’ and ‘worker’. This note poses three questions about ‘non-human labour’ with a view to strengthening the dialogue between labour historians and practitioners of these new scholarly fields.
in: Devyani Gupta and Purba Hossain (eds.), Across Colonial Lines: Commodities, Networks and Empire Building (London, etc.: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
How did colonial rulers deal with the fact that, in their overseas possessions,
they had to nego... more How did colonial rulers deal with the fact that, in their overseas possessions,
they had to negotiate ‘a radically different cognitive universe, one which [they]
grasped only imperfectly, and which [they were] never to wholly comprehend
or subdue’?5 This question has been explored by investigating indigenous
elites as sources of knowledge for the new rulers. This sharing – under duress,
or voluntarily – led to an amalgamation of precolonial and colonial forms of
knowledge. It also privileged indigenous elite interpretations of cultural forms,
histories, social relations and the environment. These interacted with the forms
of knowledge that Europeans brought to their colonies. In recent studies of
‘colonial knowledge’, scholars have privileged these elite contributions.
This chapter explores another aspect of ‘colonial knowledge’, one that requires
us to step back from the colonial-ruler/indigenous-elite dyad. Europeans were
also in direct contact with non-elite groups in their colonies, leading to struggles
over different kinds of local knowledge and to other patterns of sharing,
concealment and contestation. Moreover, ‘colonial knowledge’ was neither
confined to individual colonial empires nor did it circulate freely and uniformly
across the world. Distinct social groups shared specific types of knowledge
across colonial and imperial borders. Mapping these flows is important for
understanding how colonies and empires formed, functioned and survived; how
they differed from each other in their mixes of ‘colonial knowledge’; and how
they were linked to each other in both material and immaterial ways.
Critical Asian Studies, 55:1 (March), 105-135, 2023
A vast literature analyzes how Bengali identities developed in colonial India. This article steps... more A vast literature analyzes how Bengali identities developed in colonial India. This article steps away from both celebratory approaches and a focus on the colonial period. Instead, it explores how non-Bengalis increasingly challenged Bengali superiority in more recent times. As the colonial incarnation of a genteel Bengaliness lost its bearings and split into competing territorial manifestations in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and India, it encountered rising hostility and developed both assertive and timid configurations. This article offers an exploratory overview of how various groups of non-Bengalis have been rebuffing Bengali dominance by means of cultural distancing, graphic resistance, the ideology of indigeneity, insurgency, and the legal and military force of postcolonial states.
Willem van Schendel, ‘Commons and Wildlife Conservation,’
in:
Jelle J.P. Wouters and Tanka Subba ... more Willem van Schendel, ‘Commons and Wildlife Conservation,’
in:
Jelle J.P. Wouters and Tanka Subba (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Northeast India (London: Routledge India, 2023), 73-80.
Willem van Schendel and Gunnel Cederlöf, 'Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces - An Introduction', 2022
in:
Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Space... more in:
Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces: Histories of Networking and Border Crossing (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022).
This volume presents a conversation between historians and anthropologists who work at the crosscurrents of Asian borderland studies and Trans-Himalayan studies. We focus on the evolving relationships of time, space, and place, while combining the ethnographically historical and the historically ethnographic. In line with many recent studies, this volume challenges the conventional foregrounding of nation-states (a short-lived phenomenon in the longer view) without, however, resorting to the fantasy of disembodied flows. Contemporary events require long-term perspectives since past mobilities underlie many of today’s complex conflicts. Anchored in the region’s stunning landscapes (but not determined by them), flows are negotiated in webs of human interaction (but not defined by them).
An Open Access book.
See https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048555581/flows-and-frictions-in-trans-himalayan-spaces
Keywords: Trans-Himalayan spaces, India-China corridor, flow and friction, spatial history, Myanmar, borderlands.
Willem van Schendel, ‘Framing Spaces between India and China,’ in: Dan Smyer Yü and Karin Dean (eds.), Yunnan-Burma-Bengal Corridor Geographies: Protean Edging of Habitats and Empires (London: Routledge, 2021), 29-45, 2021
How can we think productively about the sweep of land connecting China's southwest, Myanmar's nor... more How can we think productively about the sweep of land connecting China's southwest, Myanmar's north, India's northeast, Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal? In its entirety, this region is rarely the focus of academic inquiry, even though the production of knowledge about some parts has been increasing rapidly. Stretching from the waterlogged environment of the world's largest river delta to the snowtopped slopes of the world's highest mountain range, and from the exceptionally heavy monsoons in the west to much lower-and long-term declining (Tan et al. 2017)-rainfall in the east, it is the home of a range of agro-ecological topographies and the meeting point of three of the earth's biodiversity hotspots. 1 So what is the point of considering this physically and environmentally varied zone as a single region, tentatively referred to as the "India-China corridor"? 2 Paradoxically, it is its persistent diversity that sets it apart from surrounding regions. First, the region's environmental variety has contributed to its always having been politically fractured. It was never under single common rulealthough, for a short while, British imperial designs came close. 3 As a result, local forms of sovereignty and territoriality developed out of long histories of political fragmentation and cultural variation, and these persist today. Second, the postcolonial states-India, Bangladesh, 4 Burma/Myanmar, and China-view their sections of it primarily in terms of security. After the mid-twentieth century, they interdicted economic connections across their borders, thwarting infrastructural upgrading and regional growth. 5 And third, the region has long been marginalized geopolitically. State elites considered it to be a problematic and unmanageable periphery in which local wars, ethnic confrontations, and drug lords f lourished; where resources were hard to exploit; and where state control was haphazard and expensive. As a result, it turned into a political geography of silence and erasure (Grundy-Warr and Sidaway 2006).
Terra Brasilis (Nova Série): Revista da Rede Brasileira de História da Geografia e Geografia Histórica, #15, 2021
Portuguese translation of 'Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Sou... more Portuguese translation of 'Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia' (2002).
Translator: Daniel De Lucca.
Contributions to Indian Sociology, 2020
David Lewis and Willem van Schendel, 'Rethinking the Bangladesh State,' Contributions to Indian S... more David Lewis and Willem van Schendel, 'Rethinking the Bangladesh State,' Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54:2 (2020), 306–323.
The study of the Bangladesh state continues to be a path less travelled for scholars of South Asia. The articles in this special issue aim to offer fresh perspectives based on recent ethnographic work on a variety of aspects of the state by new young national and international scholars. Overall, there is a pressing need to pay closer attention to the state and to think about it in new ways, and in this brief concluding article, we offer some thoughts on where we are and some pointers towards where we may need to go. While there are many strengths to the small quantity of literature that exists on this theme, there are also some important limitations.
in: Eva P.W. Hung and Tak-Wing Ngo (eds.), Shadow Exchanges along the New Silk Roads (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 37-73.
The concept of the Silk Road has recently been repackaged as a China-led interstate enterprise th... more The concept of the Silk Road has recently been repackaged as a China-led interstate enterprise that will lead to 'a win-win attempt for all'. This technocratic utopia of superior infrastructure, smooth transport routes, and boosted trade should be challenged, because it ignores the countless ows and networks across Eurasia that states fail to control. The zone connecting China to India across Myanmar and Bangladesh exempli es the obstacles that the broader scheme is generally likely to face: distrust, implementation de cits, fragmented sovereignty, sensitive spaces, and unregulated cross-border ows. In this chapter, it is argued that the plan, far from o fering benign progress for all, will damage many livelihoods and lead to adverse political, environmental, and security outcomes.
in: Ulbe Bosma and Karin Hofmeester (eds.), The Lifework of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of... more in: Ulbe Bosma and Karin Hofmeester (eds.), The Lifework of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of Marcel van der Linden (The Hague and Boston: Brill, 2018), 174-207.
Willem van Schendel, ‘认知地理和无知地理——在东南亚的跳跃规模’[’Renzhi-dili-he-wuzhi-dili——zai-dongnanya-de-tiaoyue-... more Willem van Schendel, ‘认知地理和无知地理——在东南亚的跳跃规模’[’Renzhi-dili-he-wuzhi-dili——zai-dongnanya-de-tiaoyue-guimo’], in: 郁丹Dan Smyer Yu, 苏发祥Su Faxiang and 李云霞Li Yunxia (eds.),《环喜马拉雅区域研究编译文集二——佐米亚、边疆与跨界》[Huan-ximalaya-quyu-yanjiu-bianyi-wenji-er——zuomiya, bianjiang yu kuajie; Trans-Himalayan Study Reader, Volume II - Zomia, Frontiers and Borderlands] (Beijing: Academy Press [学院出版社], 2018), 47-74.
Translator: Li Quanmin [李全敏], Yunnan Ethnological Research Institute, Yunnan Minzu University.
Chinese translation of ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance.’
in: Mélanie Vandenhelsken, Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh and Bengt G. Karlsson (eds.), Geographies of Difference: Explorations in Northeast Indian Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 272-288.
Willem van Schendel [威廉·冯 ·申德尔], ‘交互空间：边界、非法流动和领土国家如何相扣’[‘Jiaohukongjian: bianjie feifaliudong he... more Willem van Schendel [威廉·冯 ·申德尔], ‘交互空间：边界、非法流动和领土国家如何相扣’[‘Jiaohukongjian: bianjie feifaliudong he lingtuguojia ruhexiangkou’], in: Dan Smyer Yü, Li Yunxia and Zeng Li (eds.), 环喜马拉雅区域研究编译文集一：环境、生计与文化 [Huanximalaya quyuyanjiu bianyiwenji yi: huanjing shengji yu wenhua; Trans-Himalayan Study Reader, Volume I: Environment, Livelihood and Culture] (Beijing: Academy Press, 2017), 183-206.
Translator: Li Yunxia.
Chinese translation of 'Spaces of Engagement'.
Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 77 (2017), 1-7.
Barak Kalir and Willem van Schendel, 'Introduction: Nonrecording states between legibility and lo... more Barak Kalir and Willem van Schendel, 'Introduction: Nonrecording states between legibility and looking away,' Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 77 (2017), 1-7. freely downloadable from
http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2017.770101
in: Willem van Schendel (ed.), Embedding Agricultural Commodities: Using Historical Evidence, 184... more in: Willem van Schendel (ed.), Embedding Agricultural Commodities: Using Historical Evidence, 1840s-1940s (Oxford/New York: Routledge, 2017), 1-10.
in: Willem van Schendel (ed.), Embedding Agricultural Commodities: Using Historical Evidence, 184... more in: Willem van Schendel (ed.), Embedding Agricultural Commodities: Using Historical Evidence, 1840s-1940s (Oxford/New York: Routledge, 2017), 11-29.
Joy L K Pachuau and Willem van Schendel, 'Borderland Histories, Northeastern India: An Introducti... more Joy L K Pachuau and Willem van Schendel, 'Borderland Histories, Northeastern India: An Introduction,' Studies in History, 32:1 (2016), 1-4.
Modern Asian Studies, 50:1 (2016), 75-117,
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Papers & Chapters by Willem van Schendel
the human-derived spatial and temporal constructs that underpin most
historical narratives. It also seeks to qualify the entrenched dichotomy
between wildness and domestication. To this end, we focus on the interaction
between humans and “mithuns” (Bos frontalis), bulky bovines endemic in the
mountain forests of the eastern Himalayas. In this large region — covering
parts of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China — numerous societies
attuned their cultural sensibilities and cosmological assumptions to the same
animal. This remarkable feat of cultural convergence attests to the unwitting
power that a semi-wild bovine exerted over generations of humans — a
fact that environmental historians can incorporate into their analyses of
interspecies agency.
The significance of mithuns to humans had nothing to do with their livestock
potential. They were sacred animals that humans needed to communicate
with supernatural forces. The form that this communication took was
ceremonial sacrifice. During the twentieth century, however, mithun–human
relationships morphed into a new sacrality of place, ethnic identity, regional
belonging, and political resistance. This transformation suggests the need for
an “interspecies periodization” that takes human-nonhuman temporalities
seriously. As most of these societies historically did not use script, written
evidence is not plentiful. Therefore, Indigenous forms of knowledge
production about the environmental past — embedded in songs, stories,
dances, rituals, material remains, dress, and sculptural art — are of paramount
importance. These shaped human behaviour towards mithuns in the past, and
they continue to do so today.
they had to negotiate ‘a radically different cognitive universe, one which [they]
grasped only imperfectly, and which [they were] never to wholly comprehend
or subdue’?5 This question has been explored by investigating indigenous
elites as sources of knowledge for the new rulers. This sharing – under duress,
or voluntarily – led to an amalgamation of precolonial and colonial forms of
knowledge. It also privileged indigenous elite interpretations of cultural forms,
histories, social relations and the environment. These interacted with the forms
of knowledge that Europeans brought to their colonies. In recent studies of
‘colonial knowledge’, scholars have privileged these elite contributions.
This chapter explores another aspect of ‘colonial knowledge’, one that requires
us to step back from the colonial-ruler/indigenous-elite dyad. Europeans were
also in direct contact with non-elite groups in their colonies, leading to struggles
over different kinds of local knowledge and to other patterns of sharing,
concealment and contestation. Moreover, ‘colonial knowledge’ was neither
confined to individual colonial empires nor did it circulate freely and uniformly
across the world. Distinct social groups shared specific types of knowledge
across colonial and imperial borders. Mapping these flows is important for
understanding how colonies and empires formed, functioned and survived; how
they differed from each other in their mixes of ‘colonial knowledge’; and how
they were linked to each other in both material and immaterial ways.
in:
Jelle J.P. Wouters and Tanka Subba (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Northeast India (London: Routledge India, 2023), 73-80.
Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces: Histories of Networking and Border Crossing (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022).
This volume presents a conversation between historians and anthropologists who work at the crosscurrents of Asian borderland studies and Trans-Himalayan studies. We focus on the evolving relationships of time, space, and place, while combining the ethnographically historical and the historically ethnographic. In line with many recent studies, this volume challenges the conventional foregrounding of nation-states (a short-lived phenomenon in the longer view) without, however, resorting to the fantasy of disembodied flows. Contemporary events require long-term perspectives since past mobilities underlie many of today’s complex conflicts. Anchored in the region’s stunning landscapes (but not determined by them), flows are negotiated in webs of human interaction (but not defined by them).
An Open Access book.
See https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048555581/flows-and-frictions-in-trans-himalayan-spaces
Keywords: Trans-Himalayan spaces, India-China corridor, flow and friction, spatial history, Myanmar, borderlands.
Translator: Daniel De Lucca.
The study of the Bangladesh state continues to be a path less travelled for scholars of South Asia. The articles in this special issue aim to offer fresh perspectives based on recent ethnographic work on a variety of aspects of the state by new young national and international scholars. Overall, there is a pressing need to pay closer attention to the state and to think about it in new ways, and in this brief concluding article, we offer some thoughts on where we are and some pointers towards where we may need to go. While there are many strengths to the small quantity of literature that exists on this theme, there are also some important limitations.
See https://www.thedailystar.net/in-focus/news/blind-spots-and-biases-bangladesh-studies-1754635
Translator: Li Quanmin [李全敏], Yunnan Ethnological Research Institute, Yunnan Minzu University.
Chinese translation of ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance.’
Translator: Li Yunxia.
Chinese translation of 'Spaces of Engagement'.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2017.770101