Tinkering with care to shape human-elephant interactions by Madhuri Ramesh and Vignesh Soundararaj

About the talk: We often hear conservationists use the term “care” when they speak about their work: “We care about the fate of the planet/forests/blue whales/beetles.” And conversely, their most common complaint about other people that they interact with is “They don’t care enough about the planet/forests/blue whales/beetles.” This ambit of care widens to include humans when conservationists work in inhabited landscapes—in such cases, we hear about the importance of caring about both, wildlife and people to nurture a state of coexistence. In this talk, we use NCF’s Elephant Programme in Valparai, southern India, as a case study to take a closer look at conservation practice through the lens of care work (also known as affective labour). How exactly is care enacted in these landscapes, to what purpose, by whom (is it only the conservationists?) and how does it shape human-wildlife interactions? We will conclude our presentation by discussing the implications of some of our findings for coexistence projects in general. About the speakers: Madhuri Ramesh is a faculty member at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. She interested in interdisciplinary research on nature-society relations and teaches in the School of Development. This talk stems from a collaborative project she designed with M. Ananda Kumar of the Nature Conservation Foundation. Vignesh Soundararaj is a postdoctoral fellow at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He completed his PhD from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, on human-bovine relations amongst nomadic pastoralists in Tamil Nadu.