Handbook introduction: environments, development and wellbeing

Abstract

The Handbook explores the effects of development and social change on human-environmental interactions and wellbeing. Scenarios of alarm and fragility co-exist with the knowledge that the Himalayas are a region of resolutely autonomous communities. However, the Anthropocene and the multi-species ontological turn make human-environmental relations an altogether different field of inquiry from previous research. This introduction brings into view multiple analyses of situations in which processes of change are reflected upon by local actors. The grand shifts in people's perceptions of their transforming lives reveal their senses of relational worlds with their home places, their livelihood options and how their relationships to power and capacities for affecting patterns of change are made tangible. While traditional institutional practices of local citizenship for organizing local wellbeing are key for capacities to observe and experiment with new potentials for technological change and disaster preparedness, we take cautionary note of the slow violence that is eroding enviro-linguistic knowledge and practice. The pace of infrastructural change with road and transport systems, energy grids and IT is unparalleled, but such material networks are not in themselves determining the future. This Handbook contains rich materials for learning how researchers can contribute to informing how policies, approaches and alliances for a more habitable world could be realized