JEFFREY G. SNODGRASSMICHAEL G. LACY

SATISH KUMAR SHARMAYUVRAJ SINGH JHALA

MOHAN ADVANIN. K. BHARGAVA

CHAKRAPANI UPADHYAY

Witch Hunts, Herbal Healing, and Discoursesof Indigenous Ecodevelopment in North India:Theory and Method in the Anthropologyof Environmentality

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the environmental thought and practice of indigenous peoples living in and around a wildlife

sanctuary in North India. Analysis reveals that those religious specialists (such as shamans) who possess knowledge of herbal healing

are more committed than other villagers to preventing or mitigating the overharvesting of natural resources. To explain these results,

reference is made to a specific juncture of native traditions and modern conditions and in particular to an intersection of local economies

with global discourses of “ecodevelopment.” Drawing on theories and methods from political ecology and cultural psychology, we

present a framework for testing the extent that local actors—in this case, shamanic and herbalist healers—are differently positioned to

resist or accommodate state and parastate structures of “environmentality” than are other villagers. [Keywords: Indigenous peoples,

India, environment, development, conservation]

I NSPIRED by Michel Foucault’s (1991) writing on “gov-ernmentality,” a body of research has begun to il-

luminate the way that global discourses of conservationand development establish fields of power and meaningthat can radically transform local relations to nature (e.g.,Darier 1996; Gupta 1998; Luke 1995; Rutherford 1994).These explorations of what has come to be called “envi-ronmentality” typically focus on the manner that mod-ern institutions—either state or parastate (such as NGOs)—deploy seemingly objective “technoscientific” knowledgeof the world to establish their expertise, authority, andmoral right to police and manage protected forests andparks (Agrawal 2005a, 2005b; Brosius 1999a, 1999b). Of par-ticular anthropological interest, these studies often exam-ine how such deployments, and thus such transformationsof nature, occur in the context of protected or reservedlands inhabited by indigenous or other “ecosystem” peo-ples (Gadgil and Guha 1995), who are heavily dependent

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 110, Issue 3, pp. 299–312, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C© 2008 by the American Anthropological Association.All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00040.x

on the extraction of local natural resources for their survival(for a notable recent example of such work, see West 2006).

An abiding question in studies of modern environmen-tality is whether contemporary discourses of nature conser-vation and development are all powerful in their ability toregulate and redefine local institutions and subjectivities, orwhether there might be important limits to state and para-state power in struggles for definition and control of naturalresources. In some cases, anthropologists and other schol-ars focus on the limits: that is, how local peoples struggleto resist and transform structures that threaten to curtailand redefine their access to lands such as protected forestsdeemed important to modern nation-states (e.g., see Pof-fenberger and McGean 1996; Sundar et al. 2001; see alsoother recent writing on local resistance to state–local “co-management” initiatives such as India’s “Joint Forest Man-agement”). In other instances, they emphasize the powerof environmentality to remake localities: for example, they

300 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

examine how newly self-disciplining subjects, having in-ternalized codes and conducts linked to conservation anddevelopment, join state and parastate organizations in pro-tecting a wild nature now perceived to be threatened andvanishing (for notable South Asian examples, see Agrawal2005a, 2005b).

In this article, we present a framework for more pre-cisely assessing how and why modern state and parastatestructures of environmental regulation and managementreform some local institutions and subjectivities more thanothers. More particularly, through a consideration of theenvironmental thought and practice of indigenous peoplesinhabiting a wildlife sanctuary in southern Rajasthan (In-dia), we present a set of theoretical perspectives and em-pirical tools for understanding why differently positionedindividuals—in this case, shamanic and herbal healers—either resist or participate in modern structures of envi-ronmental regulation and management instituted by theRajasthan Forest Department (RFD) and local NGOs.

Initially hypothesizing a potential causal link betweenanimist nature reverence (Bird-David 1999) and consciouslypursued conservation (Smith and Wishnie 2000), we de-signed a “matching pairs” study in which the environmen-tal thought and practice of shamanic and other religiousspecialists were compared with that of demographicallymatching counterparts who were not specialists (for fur-ther details on our research results and design, seeSnodgrass et al. 2007, 2008). Preliminary analysis of oursurvey revealed a complex, and sometimes opposed, associ-ation between indigenous religiosity and nature conserva-tion (Snodgrass et al. 2008). Further analysis of our surveydata, which we present in this article, however, demon-strates that the knowledge of healing plants held by indi-viduals referred to as gunis or gunijans (lit., “knowledgeableor gifted ones”) adds significantly to these individuals’ con-servation thought and practice. In contrast to our previouswork on the effect of religious belief alone, we argue herethat greater herbal knowledge, in combination with reli-gion, does lead individuals to display greater commitmentto preventing or mitigating resource overharvesting and en-vironmental damage to their lands.

We explain these results, in part, with reference to thefact that herbalist healers display a deep social and eco-nomic dependence on the jungle, which leads them topursue what has been called a “practical environmental-ism of the poor” (Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997). Herbal-ists are motivated, it would seem, to protect and conservethe jungles with which their livelihoods, well-being, andvery social identities are intertwined. By contrast, religiousspecialists who do not employ herbalist knowledge do noteconomically or socially depend on wild nature to the sameextent.

However, we emphasize in this article that herbalistand shamanic healers’ relationships to nature are power-fully influenced by modern structures of conservation anddevelopment originating with the RFD and local NGOs.

Herbal healers are favorably positioned to take advantageof current state and parastate interest in medicinal plants,an interest stimulated in part by international and nationalcommitment to document and preserve local biodiversity.By contrast, religious specialists such as shamans, perceivedby many within the dominant Hindu society to be super-stitious “witch-hunters” (that is, they use magic to huntwitches), have been the target of centuries of repressive re-form. Compared to shamans, then, herbal healers in thisarea of Rajasthan seem more favorably predisposed toward“outsiders” and are thus more likely to cooperate with thestate and parastate organizations now promoting a combi-nation of conservation and development agendas locallytermed “ecodevelopment.” We thus explain our healer in-formants’ conservation thought and practice with referenceto a particular juncture of native traditions and modernconditions.

In building these arguments about indigenous peo-ples and conservation, we hope to show how poststruc-turalist debates concerning “environmentality” can be usedto generate empirically testable hypotheses as well as tomeaningfully interpret data regarding the relative impact ofcontemporary regimes of environmental management onparticular localities. Modern state and parastate formsof environmental regulation undoubtedly impact localeconomies and cultures in this wildlife sanctuary in di-verse and important ways; likewise, locals invariably resistin myriad manners the simple imposition of state or NGOwill in these contexts of resource use and management.But documenting more precisely the exact extent to whichenvironmental regulation variously affects different groupssuch as shamans and herbalists can be enhanced, we be-lieve, through careful research design. We present this arti-cle as an example of such research: a study in which initialqualitative interviews and observations allow for the con-struction of a culturally meaningful survey, through whichhypotheses related to environmental thought and practiceare systematically tested with statistical techniques.

SETTING

Phulwari ki Nal is a dry tropical deciduous forest reserve of511 square kilometers, which sits in the southern portionof the Aravalli mountain range in Udaipur District nearthe Rajasthani town of Kotra (see Figure 1). Before IndianIndependence in 1947, this area was a hunting reserve ofthe erstwhile rulers of the Princely Kingdom of Bhumat.In 1983, the area was declared a state wildlife sanctuary inaccordance with the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act, as wellas the 1980 Rajasthan Forest Conservation Act.

Indigenous persons in India—referred to as Adivasis(lit., “first inhabitants” or “natives”), janjatis (often trans-lated as “tribals”), and “scheduled tribes” (they are “sched-uled,” along with India’s formerly untouchable caste com-munities, for government aid programs aiming to alleviatetheir poverty and “backwardness”)—continue to inhabit

Snodgrass et al. • The Anthropology of Environmentality 301

FIGURE 1. A communist flag flies above a Bhil home in Phulwari kiNal.

many of India’s protected and reserved forests, parks, andwildlife sanctuaries. In the case of Phulwari ki Nal, there are134 villages within the sanctuary (Bhatnagar et al. 2003),most of which are dominated by members of the Bhil tribe,the largest population in the area and the third largest tribalgroup in India.1

Tribals depend heavily on the Phulwari forests for theireconomic survival, although in law no one is allowed totake even a single blade of grass from within the sanctuary’sboundaries. (In the pages to follow, most references to “for-est[s]” refer to the healthy jungle[s] within the boundariesof this wildlife sanctuary.) Our typical respondent visits theforest every third day, although usually at least one familymember travels there daily, and most describe themselvesas heavily reliant on forest produce. The aforementionedgunijans, or “gifted ones,” possess deep knowledge of heal-ing roots and herbs (referred to collectively as jadi bhuti).They use their knowledge to heal others, for which they re-ceive gifts of food, clothing, and cash. Others sell jadi bhutieither directly to ayurvedic doctors or to middlemen wholater resell them in a flourishing herbal medicine market.Herbal healers and nonhealers alike collect, and sometimessell, wild fruits, vegetables, gum, honey, and the flowers andfruits of the mahua trees (from which, respectively, alcoholand edible oil are produced). As a major source of incomein the early summer months, area tribals contract to col-lect tendu leaves, which are used to wrap bidi cigarettes.They also gather “headloads” of grass and wood, used orsold as animal fodder and wood for fuel. In especially leanyears, some villagers, usually in cahoots with Gujarat-based“timber mafias,” illicitly harvest hardwoods and bamboo,which in the rainy season are floated at night downriverwhere they are sold.

Many tribals work part of the year for the RFD. Someharvest bamboo, hardwoods, and other forest products un-der state contracts whereas others help officials track andcount the sanctuary’s leopards and other wildlife. Most areable to earn some income, if they desire, planting saplings,maintaining nurseries, or building the RFD’s many dams

FIGURE 2. Clay horses are “sacrificed” at a forest shrine to the godsand spirits of the mountain, both of whom are believed to bringprosperity to local Bhil families.

(or smaller anicuts and “check-dams”), watering holes forwildlife, roads, and stone fences (meant to keep grazing an-imals from devouring newly planted trees). Likewise, theRFD periodically manages famine relief and other welfarefunds that sometimes flow into the area, providing an im-portant safety net for tribal populations in difficult times.

Most of our respondents also own farmland and do-mesticated herd animals. In spite of their many sources oflivelihood, our informants are generally poor, with 42.9percent in our sample holding Below Poverty Line (BPL)cards that allow them to buy food essentials at deep dis-counts from government stores. Members of most tribalhouseholds, from economic necessity, do nonforest-relatedwage labor in Gujarat and other neighboring states for upto six to eight months a year.

If the jungle is important economically to our respon-dents, it also has deep religious significance. Tribal peo-ples inhabiting the Phulwari ki Nal wildlife sanctuary inRajasthan (India) can be said to “worship” their environ-ment (see Figure 2). Bhils, for example, revere Magra Baosi,their name for the living mountain who is believed topossess bones, blood, and hair in his rocks, rivers, trees,and mosses.2 Magra Baosi—along with other spiritual en-tities, such as animal and plant spirits but also ancestorsand ghosts, who are said to prefer a jungle residence—are “installed” (sthapa hua) in a network of forest shrinesand sacred groves, referred to variously as devrasthans, de-vrasthals, and devravans. These spiritual entities are tendedby various categories of religious specialists. For example,“shaking, trembling, and emotionally charged” (dhunni aurbhav a gaya) shamans, who are in the focus of this article,are defined locally as those able to channel spiritual energyfrom the forested mountain into their own bodies for thepurpose of healing.3

RESEARCH DESIGN

The current study combined the use of ethnographic andformal survey methods. In the ethnographic phase, the lead

302 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

author, Jeffrey Snodgrass, worked in tribal communities inRajasthan for each of the summers from 2003 through 2007and over a four-month period in fall 2005. Following on hisearlier research in Udaipur since the early 1990s, Snodgrassusually spent 10–12 hours a day intermingling with tribalsand RFD employees in village and forest contexts and thensleeping nights in RFD outposts (nakkas) located near tribalvillages or in villages themselves.4

On the basis of this qualitative work, we created a sur-vey to more formally elicit the environmental thought andreported practice of religious specialists (shamans) in com-parison to demographically matched nonspecialist tribalmembers. In this setting, informants easily and consensu-ally identified and distinguished the shamans (rakhus orbhopas) within their villages from the nonspecialists whowere not shamans. By comparing persons with especiallyintense religious commitment with otherwise similar per-sons of lesser religious commitment, we sought to illumi-nate a question central to the original intention of this re-search: namely, whether more intense animist or religiouscommitment might lead informants to more vigorouslyprotect, conserve, and sustainably manage their lands.

The survey was written in Hindi and, after multiplefield tests, administered orally in local Rajasthani dialectsby six master’s students in sociology from Bhupal Nobles’P. G. College (Udaipur, Rajasthan) over a two-week periodin November of 2005. The survey was administered to in-dividuals inhabiting 20 tribal villages located in or near theproposed ecological core of the Phulwari ki Nal. This as-sured that we elicited responses from persons who, in theRFD’s opinion, would be most critical to the conservationof the sanctuary’s key areas. The sample comprised 238 in-dividuals: 119 religious specialists (approximately all locallyknown and recognized specialists in the area) and 119 non-specialist informants (who were chosen for their similaritiesto the specialists in age, gender, tribe, education, village ofresidence, and economic status).

The content of the survey was influenced by social psy-chological methods and debates regarding environmentallysignificant thought and practice (e.g., Schultz et al. 2000;Stern 2000). However, we followed anthropological surveyconstruction methods, with most statements in our ques-tionnaire containing direct quotes of widely recurring ideastaken directly from qualitative interviews. To measure theherbal knowledge of our informants, which is of particularinterest here, we first elicited free lists of “important herbalremedies you know,” for which answers ranged from treat-ments for upset stomachs and diarrhea to cures for scor-pion stings and rabies (see Figure 3). The most commonlyrecurring items were included in a list of 12 herbal knowl-edge items in the questionnaire. Each survey informant wasgiven an herbal knowledge score equal to the number of the12 items about which they claimed knowledge.5 Althoughlocal dispute and considerable modesty existed about whoqualified as a “true” gunijan, individuals were readily will-ing and able to claim knowledge of individual herbal treat-

FIGURE 3. Pictured here is the Bhil herbalist, Kalaji.

ments. Thus, our survey yielded a measure of relative degreeof self-assessed knowledge of herbal cures, rather than iden-tifying informants as publicly recognized herbal healers.

In the following section, we examine whether posses-sion of herbal knowledge tends to increase the proenvi-ronmental thinking and practice of our religious specialistinformants as compared to their matched counterparts. Weuse a matched-pairs analysis, which allows us to control theeffects of other variables (wealth, gender, etc.) that typicallyare associated with religious specialist status in the commu-nities we studied.

RESULTS: RELIGIOSITY, HERBAL KNOWLEDGE, ANDRELATIONSHIP TO THE ENVIRONMENT

We have summarized results of our survey in Tables 1–3.The first few columns of Tables 1 and 3—labeled “f . RSHigher,” “f . RS Lower,” and “p-value RS”—report statis-tics related to the impact of religious specialist status aloneon proenvironmental thinking and practice: that is, thesedata present summary responses of specialists versus theirmatched pairs without regard to herbalist knowledge. Thefirst data column (“f . RS Higher”) reports the numberof pairs in which religious specialists scored higher thannonspecialists on various items relevant to environmentalthought and practice; the second column (“f . RS Lower”)reports the number for the reversed situation in which spe-cialists scored lower than nonspecialists. Looking for ex-ample at item 1.1 in Table 1, we see that for 19 pairs thereligious specialist had a greater preference for wild over cul-tivated vegetables for their health benefits than did the de-mographically matched nonspecialist counterpart, whereasfor 23 pairs the nonspecialist showed a greater preferencefor these wild foods. (The remainder of the 117 pairs tiedin their relative preference for wild as opposed to cultivatedvegetables.) The figure in the column headed “p-value RS”is from a test of whether the true proportion of RS higherpairs exceeds the chance value of 0.5 (Hays 1981). For thisitem, the relatively small number of RS higher pairs and the

Snodgrass et al. • The Anthropology of Environmentality 303

TABLE 1. Religion, Herbal Knowledge, and Proenvironmental Thought and Practice: 117 Pairs of Individuals.

f. RS f. RS p-value

Item# Question Higher1 Lower2 p-value RS3 Somers’ D Herb4 Herb5

Preference for wild over cultivated vegetables for:1.1 health benefits 19 23 .780 .181 .0011.2 strength-giving benefits 17 29 .973 .160 .0031.3 taste 20 26 .849 .182 .001

Likelihood to make use of:1.4 honey 31 35 .731 .080 .0901.5 wild fruit 33 24 .145 .079 .0861.6 wild vegetables 39 25 .052 .177 .002

Likelihood to agree with the statement:1.7 The mountain is smarter than humans 30 24 .248 .139 .0101.8 Mining and cutting trees causes the mountain to

feel pain14 12 .423 .062 .094

1.9 The god of the mountain protects the jungle morethan farmland

40 28 .091 .083 .075

1.10 Times visited the mountain god’s mountaintoptemple (past 3 yrs.)

50 51 .579 .110 .031

Likeliness to spot:1.11 panther 41 24 .023 .181 .0011.12 panther signs/tracks 40 40 .544 .181 .0021.13 hyena 34 27 .221 .185 .0011.14 hyena signs/track6 37 38 .591 .054 .1971.15 bear 34 28 .263 .161 .0021.16 bear signs/tracks 33 33 .549 .122 .0161.17 antelope 56 38 .039 .097 .0491.18 antelope signs/tracks 45 38 .255 .090 .0851.19 porcupine 36 26 .126 .180 .0011.20 porcupine sign/tracks 39 26 .068 .082 .1041.21 Likelihood to know about the needs and habits

of wild animals35 30 .310 .222 .000

1.22 Likelihood to be paid to create amulets protectfrom wild animals

25 0 .000 .135 .002

1.23 Likelihood to have had wild animals devourdomesticated animals

29 25 .342 .070 .114

Likelihood to think:1.24 Wild animals are a form / manifestation of God 13 7 .132 102 .0331.25 Wild animals have communicated with me in my

dreams27 14 .030 .113 .020

Likelihood to agree with the statement:1.26 I really enjoy walking and spending time in the

jungle18 15 .364 .083 .059

1.27 I am afraid of the jungle and wild animals7 12 14 .423 −.065 .1231.28 There are so many different kinds of wild animals in

the jungle, it doesn’t make any difference if threeto four species go extinct+

33 28 .779 −.104 .020

Greater likelihood to:1.29 report an illegal felling of trees to the RFD 20 15 .250 .124 .0281.30 stop the illicit cutting of trees 34 30 .354 .149 .0131.31 serve on forest protection committees (FPCs) 20 18 .436 .097 .0551Number of pairs in which the religious specialists scored higher than their demographically matched pairs. 2Number of pairs in whichthe religious specialists scored lower than their demographically matched pairs. 3The p value is from a sign test (exact binominal) that thetrue proportion of pairs with religious specialists higher exceeds the chance value of .5 or 50 percent. 4Somers’ D (Agresti 1984) indicatesthe strength of association or level of predictability between an ordinal independent and ordinal dependent variable and ranges on a scalefrom a −1.0 (perfect negative association) to +1.0 (perfect positive), with 0 indicating no association. 5p values reported for the Somers’statistic come from bootstrap procedures in Newson’s (2002) somersd package. 6Not significant at the level of p ≤ .15. 7These questions arenegatively phrased, so that a negative Somers’ D indicates a deeper environmental consciousness or a closer connection to nature.

nonsignificant p value (.780) would suggest that that reli-giosity is not associated with a greater preference for wildvegetables.

The data in these first few columns of Tables 1 and 3are reported here chiefly to set up our subsequent analysis:namely, what herbal knowledge adds to the impact of reli-giosity on our informants’ environmental attitudes, which

is the focus of this article and which is reported in thesetables’ last two columns (“Somers’ D Herb” and "p-valueHerb"). Nevertheless, readers should notice that in manysurvey items there is little difference between the environ-mental thought and practice of religious specialists andtheir matched nonspecialists—that is, between the num-bers reported in “f . RS Higher” and “f . RS Lower” columns.

304 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

TABLE 2. Responses of Religious Specialists to Survey Item 1.30 (“How Often Have You Stopped an Illegal Tree Felling?”) as Compared toMatched Pairs, by Level of Herbal Knowledge.

Response of religious specialist Relative level of herbal knowledge ofversus matched pair on tree-felling question religious specialist versus matched pair

1: RS low 2: RS medium 3: RS higher Total

RS lower 16 6 8 3036.36 18.18 20.00 25.64

RS same 20 15 18 5345.45 45.45 45.00 45.30

RS higher 8 12 14 3418.18 36.36 35.00 29.05

Total 44 33 40 117100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

As such, these survey items’ corresponding “p-values RS”are not significant, suggesting an overall weak relationshipbetween religiosity and depth of connection to nature (seeSnodgrass et al. 2008 for further discussion of these results).

The principal aim of our analysis is to understand howherbal knowledge adds to the effect of religious commit-ment on proenvironmental thinking and practice. Consid-ering that a religious specialist status is related, althoughsomewhat ambiguously, to both level of traditional herbalknowledge and to proenvironmental thinking and practicerequires a more detailed analysis. A simple bivariate analysisof the relationship between herbal knowledge and proen-vironmental responses would be confounded by an indi-vidual’s religious specialist status. Whether a revealed rela-tionship between herbal knowledge and proenvironmentalresponses was based on an individual’s herbal knowledge,their status as a religious specialist, or some combination ofthe two would not be distinguishable.

To avoid this potential confound, we used a matchedpair statistical analysis that allows us to keep the effects ofreligiosity and herbal knowledge separate and control forthe extraneous effects of demographic factors on our infor-mants’ environmental thinking. Specifically, our analyticmethod involved examining the relationship of (1) the dif-ference in herbal knowledge of the religious specialists ascompared to their matched pairs (the first variable) and (2)the difference in proenvironmental value responses of thespecialists and their matched pairs (the second variable; seeFigure 4).

We introduce this form of analysis with the example ofresponses to item 1.30, whether the respondent had triedto stop the illegal cutting of jungle timber (“frequently,”“sometimes,” or “never”), reported in Table 2. We start byinspecting the Total column, which replicates in more de-tail the relationship of this environmental practice to reli-gious specialist status given in the relevant row of Table 1.The Table 2 column shows that 29.05 percent (N = 34)of religious specialists gave a higher, more proenviron-ment response than their matched pair member (i.e., theytried more often to stop such illegal cutting), 25.64 percent(N = 30) gave a lower response, and 45.30 percent (N = 53)gave the same response.

But our analysis now introduces the herbalist knowl-edge variable, by examining how the distribution ofreligious specialist (RS) “lower”/“same”/“higher” proenvi-ronmental response (the second variable) varies in relationto the level of herbal knowledge the religious specialist hasrelative to her or his matched pair (the first variable). Todo this, we calculate the difference in the herbal knowl-edge score between each religious specialist and matchedpair so that higher-scored pairs are ones in which the reli-gious specialist was more knowledgeable. For economy ofdisplay and exposition in this example table, we have cate-gorized superiority of herbal knowledge of the religious spe-cialist into “low” (this includes even those cases in whichRS herbal knowledge was lower than their pairs, which wasrare), “medium” (where RS are somewhat higher than theirpairs in their level of herbal knowledge), and “high” (whereRS have a significantly higher level of knowledge thantheir matched pairs). By comparing across the columns ofTable 2, we can see how this difference in herbal knowledgeis associated with “lower/“same”/“higher” proenvironmen-tal responses. In the first column (1), among those reli-gious specialists with low herbal knowledge relative to theirmatched pairs, the response on the “stop illegal cutting”response was shifted relatively toward the “RS lower”/ “RSsame” response categories, as compared to the “Total” col-umn. But in the second and third columns (2 and 3), con-taining those religious specialists with more herbal knowl-edge than paired individuals, the tree-cutting response isshifted toward the “RS higher,“ more proenvironment cat-egories compared to the “Total.” Table 2, then, shows theextent to which greater herbal knowledge on the part of thereligious specialists tends to be associated with their ex-pressing more proenvironment values, while adjusting forthe pair matching. Because this is an ordinal-by-ordinaltabulation, we can summarize the strength of associa-tion with an ordinal measure of association, for which wechose Somers’ D (Agresti 1984). This statistic indicates thestrength of association between an ordinal independentand ordinal dependent variable, ranging from −1.0 (per-fect negative association) to +1.0 (perfect positive) with 0indicating no association. P values for Somers’ D come frombootstraping the somersd routine of Roger Newson (2002).

Snodgrass et al. • The Anthropology of Environmentality 305

TABLE 3. Economy and Relationship to the Outside World of Religious Specialists and Herbal Healers: 117 Pairs of Individuals.

f. RS f. RS p-value Somers’ D p-value

# Question higher1 lower2 RS3 herb4 herb5

Greater likelihood to:3.1 own a kacca home lacking stone and mortar 7 4 .274 .059 .0653.2 own goats 47 45 .623 −.079 .1163.3 .782

own land56 49 −.123 .021

3.4 .307own irrigated land

29 34 −.103 .0433.5 own wasteland 36 33 .405 .138 .0063.6 encroach upon RFD land 35 35 .548 .099 .0633.7 have a large harvest 54 51 .652 −.107 .0503.8 possess a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card 35 26 .153 .176 .0023.9 be from a family that has been in the area for

more generations636 32 .358 .052 .212

3.10 have more elders in the family 31 37 .802 .091 .0573.11 live easily without access to forest resources7 12 12 .581 −.108 .0103.12 meet with RFD employees 38 33 .318 .091 .0733.13 help the RFD conduct its animal censuses 7 4 .274 .089 .0143.14 meet with NGO employees 34 19 .027 .120 .0263.15 think that NGOs do good work 22 13 .088 .065 .1173.16 take part in “training” related to wild

medicines by local NGOs4 6 .828 .068 .041

3.17 take part in other non-forest related NGOtraining

4 7 .887 .066 .039

3.18 meet with politicians 41 24 .023 .147 .0063.19 vote 2 6 .965 .052 .0161Number of pairs in which the religious specialists scored higher than their demographically matched pairs. 2Number of pairs in whichthe religious specialists scored lower than their demographically matched pairs. 3The p value is from a sign test (exact binomial) that thetrue proportion of pairs with religious specialists higher exceeds the chance value of .5 or 50 percent. 4Somers’s D (Agresti 1984) indicatesthe strength of association or level of predictability between an ordinal independent and ordinal dependent variable and ranges on a scalefrom a −1.0 (perfect negative association) to +1.0 (perfect positive), with 0 indicating no association. 5p values reported for the Somers’sstatistic come from bootstrap procedures in Newson’s (2002) somersd package. 6Not significant at the level of p ≤ .15. 7These questions arenegatively phrased, so that a negative Somers’ D indicates a deeper environmental consciousness or a closer connection to nature.

FIGURE 4. Lead author with Bhil herbalist Kalaji (foreground) andBhil shaman-herbalist Ditaram (background).

On the basis of this founding example, we now reporton the relationship between herbal knowledge and severalproenvironmental thought and practice variables. In theinterest of brevity, we forego the detailed presentation ofTable 2, instead reporting just Somers’ D and its p values

to indicate the effect of herbal knowledge on various formsof proenvironmentalism, while controlling for the effect ofreligious specialist status alone. The sole difference from theexample of Table 2 is that we have retained the differencein herbal knowledge pairs as a continuous variable ratherthan categorizing the differences between RS and their pairsas “low”/“medium”/“high,” as we did for the purpose ofsimpler illustration in Table 2.

On the basis of this form of analysis reported in thelast two columns of Table 1 (“Somers’ D Herb” and “p-value Herb”), individuals with greater knowledge of heal-ing herbs tend to favor wild vegetables over cultivatedvegetables for their health benefits, strength-giving prop-erties, and taste, which they use more frequently alongwith other forest products (items 1.1–1.6). We also see thatherbal knowledge is associated with animist nature rev-erence variables: for example, with a greater tendency tothink that the mountain is smarter than human beingsand that mining causes the mountain to feel real pain (1.7,1.8). Likewise, those with herbal knowledge think that themountain god protects the jungle more than farmland, andindividuals with herbal knowledge in fact take more trips to

306 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

mountaintop shrines as compared to others, demonstrat-ing a potentially greater commitment to conducting theirnature worship actually in nature (1.9, 1.10). (Note herethat associations of herbalist knowledge with animist be-lief are above and beyond any associated effects of religiousspecialist status.)

Those with greater knowledge of the healing propertiesof wild plants are also more likely than others to report thespotting of each and every animal included in our survey,including leopard, hyena, bear, porcupine, and antelope.They are also more likely to report seeing or hearing thesigns of each of these wild animals (except hyenas): theirtracks and paw prints, their claw scratches on trees (leop-ards), their calls and hollers, their scat, and their droppedspines (porcupines; see 1.11–1.20). Increased herbal knowl-edge is also associated with more reported knowledge aboutthe needs and habits of wildlife (1.21). Similarly, despite thefact that their domesticated herd animals are more likely tobe devoured by leopards, individuals with greater herbalknowledge are still more likely to be paid to construct mag-ical amulets of protection from the depredations of wildanimals, to worship wild beasts of the jungle, and, indeed,to receive mystical communications from jungle animals intheir dreams (1.23–1.25).

Likewise, guni herbalists are more likely than othersto enjoy wandering in the jungle and (slightly) less likelyto fear the jungle (1.26, 1.27). Herbal healers also expressmore awareness of the important interconnection of specieswithin the jungle (1.28). And of most importance for ourcurrent argument, herbal healers score higher on each andevery one of what we consider the most meaningful ques-tions related to self-reported conservation practice: guni-jans are more likely to report a forest crime to the RFD,to stop the illicit cutting of trees (at potentially great per-sonal risk), and also to serve on forest protection commit-tees (1.29–1.31).

We might expect knowledge of one aspect of the bi-ological world (e.g., healing plants) to be associated withgreater knowledge of other aspects of nature (like wild veg-etables, fruit, or even wild animals; Berlin 1992; Medin andAtran 1999). However, gunijans’ deep respect for an ani-mate and intricately interconnected nature—and, indeed,their commitment to actively defend that nature—cannotsimply be explained by the interrelationship of similarcognitive domains of folk biological knowledge. Further,the results of our analysis allow us to rule out the pos-sibility that the apparent influence of herbal knowledgeon proenvironmental thought and practice is only the ef-fect of the religious specialist status commonly associatedwith herbalist knowledge. To the contrary, herbalist iden-tity and practice has an independent and substantial effecton our informants’ proenvironmental thought and prac-tice. To explain the connection between herbalism andproenvironmentalism, we turn first to our respondents’ lo-cal economy and then to how such an economy intersectswith regional, national, and even global discourses andinstitutions.

LOCAL JUNGLE ECONOMIES: HERBALISTS’ PRACTICALENVIRONMENTALISM OF THE POOR

Looking more closely at our survey results, we find an im-portant association between herbal knowledge and appar-ent poverty. Herbalist knowledge is associated with own-ing a kacca (crude or unfinished) home lacking in stoneand mortar, having fewer domesticated farm animals likegoats, owning less overall and irrigated farmland, havingacquired more wasteland and encroached on more land of-ficially managed by the RFD, and having smaller harvests.Perhaps most significantly, possessing herbal knowledgeis associated with possessing a Below Poverty Line (BPL)card, which qualifies individuals for state welfare programs.Tellingly, herbal knowledge is never associated with surveyitems demonstrating greater wealth. (For these results, seeTable 3:3.1–3.8.)

Being recent migrants, individuals with herbal knowl-edge typically arrived too late to take possession of primeagricultural land,6 instead being more likely to encroachon, as noted, state-owned land or to grab up less desirable“wasteland” (3.3–3.6).7 Likewise, herbalist families tendedto stay “joint” for longer (3.10), mainly because, we pro-pose, they owned too little land to distribute to their sons’new households. These larger families put additional eco-nomic strain on household resources. It is thus not surpris-ing that individuals with herbal knowledge report a greatereconomic dependence on the forest (3.11). In addition tothe many trips to gather wood for fuel, fodder, and so forthnecessary for most tribals, these individuals also meticu-lously collect often hard-to-find healing herbs. Treating lo-cals and caste Hindus with these herbs, and indeed sellingthem in relatively flourishing markets for ayurvedic plants,provides important supplementary income for these indi-viduals.

Herbal healers’ economic dependence on the jungle,we believe, helps to explain these individuals’ greater like-lihood to cooperate with the RFD and local NGOs in thearea promoting ecodevelopment. As one tribal man put itin a sentiment repeated by herbal healers in particular:

Without the forest, we can’t live, no one can live. Yes,the forest is even “bigger” than our parents. Our parentsare “behind” the forest—the jungle is “ahead” of them.. . .

The jungle is the most valuable thing there is. Every-thing we could possibly need is in the jungle. It is our“business” and our life. The jungle supports everyoneand everything, big and small. [Field notes, November13, 2005]

In serving on forest protection committees and re-porting forests crimes, herbal healers quite practically de-fend the resource on which they in particular depend fromdegradation and destruction by other groups and factions,both within and outside the community, who are less di-rectly dependent on wild plant and forest resources. Asone older tribal woman straightforwardly said, “When the

Snodgrass et al. • The Anthropology of Environmentality 307

jungle dries up, our own bodies dry up too” (field notes,August 4, 2004).

These details related to herbal healers’ economic de-pendence on wild resources explains why we refer to theseindividuals’ actions, following Ramachandra Guha andJoan Martinez-Alier’s (1997) discussion of alternate formsof non-Western conservation thought and practice, as a“practical environmentalism of the poor”: individuals whopractice herbal healing protect the forests on which theirown economic well-being—and, indeed, their social stand-ing and very identity—depends. Appeals to conservation inthese contexts are thus as much about social justice andan equitable distribution of resources among human com-munities as about the protection of nonhuman forms oflife.

Certainly all tribals in the area depend on forests fortheir survival and well-being. Nevertheless, note that indi-viduals with herbal knowledge outscore their matched pairs(i.e., more “typical” tribals) on both poverty indicators andon their level of dependence on wild resources. Conversely,religious specialists do not outscore their own paired indi-viduals in dependence on wild resources, nor are they lowerin a statistically significant way on economic survey itemsrelated to type of home, landowning, domesticated ani-mals, encroachment, or size of harvests. We interpret thesedetails to mean that herbal healers’ particular economy isintertwined with their environmental ethics in a way notcharacteristic of religious specialists or other tribals.8

LOCAL–GLOBAL INTERSECTIONS: GOOD AND BADNATIVES IN STATE DISCOURSES OF ECODEVELOPMENT

Lands now considered part of the Phulwari ki Nal WildlifeSanctuary were in pre-Independence times ruled by the ja-girdar (feudal lord) of Bhumat. In the 19th century, thislord was himself subordinate to the Maharana (great king)of Mewar, who was in turn beholden to the British. Al-though feudal Rajput rulers played dominant roles in pre-Independence forest management in this area, our ethno-historical interviews reveal that tribal headmen (patels) andcouncils (pancayats) also participated in management. Pa-tels, typically appointed by Rajput lords, helped to resolvedisputes over the ownership of, for example, valuable gumor mahua trees. Headmen also had the responsibility ofassuring local observance of royal forest dictates. Local Adi-vasis were valuable Rajput foot soldiers but they also servedon forest patrols and as lower-level resource managers forRajput lords.9

In the post-Independence period (i.e., after 1947), tribalforest inhabitants were declared trespassers and squatterson lands now largely controlled by the Indian state throughthe RFD, which pursued commodity-extraction policies ini-tiated by the British. Bhil elders, for example, told us howbarely 20 years ago tribal gum trees, under the watch ofthe RFD, fell to the axe and were burned down to coal.Likewise, the pancayat raj system, a new form of villagerule, largely eclipsed the traditional system of headman

FIGURE 5. Rajasthan Forest Department officers.

and tribal council. This new form of government purportsto “develop” forest and other natural resources to betterthe economic situation of tribals, but many local Adivasisviewed it as corrupt form of governance, largely benefitingoutside economic interests and a small cadre of tribal elites,the so-called “creamy layer” of the scheduled tribe popu-lation (Unnithan-Kumar 1997). Since the early 1980s, theIndian state and the RFD have tried to regain local supportfor state-sponsored conservation and forest management.“Social Forestry” and “Joint Forest Management” (JFM) aretwo examples of such efforts, the implementation of whichis fraught with difficulty and local resistance (Poffenbergerand McGean 1996; Sundar et al. 2001; see Figure 5).

We present these details, first of all, to show that what-ever land ethic local indigenous peoples possess is a prod-uct of centuries of interaction with state-level institutions.Although local livelihood pressures affect herbal healers’proenvironmental thinking and practice, economies existwithin fields of power and meaning established by pre- andpostcolonial states. We thus align our research with schol-arship of “environmentality,” which examines how statestructures of environmental regulation and managementremake local institutions, often transforming once recalci-trant subjects into seemingly committed conservationists(Agrawal 2005a, 2005b).

However, we still need to explain why herbal as com-pared to purely shamanic practitioners are more likely tolink with the RFD’s conservation agendas. In part, we wouldpoint to the intensively practical relationship herbalistshave to the jungle: that is, we wish to highlight these indi-viduals’ economic and social traditions. However, practicesof shamanic and herbal healers are framed in particularways within state discourses of indigeneity, development,and conservation. We thus need to attend to the state’sconstruction of “indigeneity” and “indigenous expertise”and see how it may affect local environmental thought andpractice (see Gupta 1998 for the idea that “indigeneity”is a residual category of all that is “not modern”; see alsoBeteille 1998).

308 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

FIGURE 6. Constructing roads and other structures (such as water-ing holes for wild animals and dams) is an important source ofincome for local Adivasis.

First, we note that shamans, like many other indige-nous religious leaders, have experienced particularly strongpersecution from caste society and the Indian state. Fromcolonial times in the mid-1800s until now, repeated cam-paigns have tried to extinguish local religious beliefs as“superstitions.” Many reform movements in and aroundPhulwari ki Nal have attempted to purify and “Sanskri-tize” (Srinivas 1989) local tribals by, for example, breakingthe authority and influence of shamans who, as “witch-hunters,” sometimes targeted innocent women, and thuswere seen as a locus of particularly virulent and handicap-ping “backwardness.” With this history of conflict betweenshamans and both the state and Hindu reformers, we arenot surprised that shamans are less eager to collaboratewith their historic “enemies” (dusman)—a term recurrentin many interviews with shamanic informants.

By contrast, the Indian state currently frames herbalhealers quite differently. It envisions them as critically im-portant to documenting and conserving local biodiversity,interests stimulated in part by a growing awareness of thepotential economic and cultural value of local plants. Thefirst step to protecting national sovereignty over distinc-tive local flora—and thus protecting property rights overany medicines or crops produced from either naturallyoccurring or genetically modified plant germplasm—is todocument such biodiversity (on anthropological debatesconcerning bioprospecting, see Anderson 2002; Berlin andBerlin 2002; Greene 2004; Hayden 2003; Nigh 2002). Oneof this article’s coauthors, Satish Kumar Sharma, currently aforest ranger in the employ of the RFD, was the initiator ofNal Sandol, a RFD nursery near Phulwari ki Nal created toprotect and disseminate local biodiversity and knowledgeabout such biodiversity. Dr. Sharma and other RFD officersand employees generally turn first to tribals with herbalknowledge when seeking to augment the nursery’s collec-tion of distinctive local flora. Herbalists gain important ad-ditional cash income for this work and also become rec-ognized as “knowledgeable ones” by prestigious outsiders.

We also learned that some locally recognized herbalists hadlearned much, perhaps even most of their herbal remediesthrough state- and NGO-sponsored “training” (they usedthe English term), another benefit of interacting with out-siders, which undermines any simple conception of herbalknowledge as “traditional” (see Figure 6).

The RFD also relies on herbalists to help track and countwildlife because they know where to locate wild animals asa by-product of their practical working relationship to thejungle and the time they spend in wild areas. Indeed, main-taining a good working relationship with the RFD seemedto help healers avoid fines or even eviction for illegal forestextractions and settlements. It also seemed to help themmore readily garner employment from the RFD in the con-struction of check-dams, roads, water holes for wildlife, and“cattle barriers” to keep grazing goats out of RFD planta-tions. In general, the RFD seemed less concerned about theimpact of herbalists’ extractions of wild healing plants thanabout the grazing of herd animals like goats—who could de-vour every last green leaf in a new RFD plantation of youngsaplings—and thus more ready to steer opportunities theirway. A further advantage to herbal healers of interactionswith RFD and NGO employees was the opportunity to gainclients in the wealthier strata of society. But interactionswith outsiders to local communities were not only of eco-nomic benefit to these individuals. Herbalists also receivedsocial recognition for this work, as when the authors sawhigh caste and wealthy individuals, even ayurvedic doctorswho purportedly knew a great deal about healing plantsprostrate themselves at the feet of tribal gurus to receive orlearn about wild medicines.

On the basis of benefits herbalists gain from interac-tion with outsiders, it is not surprising that they morecommonly align favorably to the environmental agenda ofthe state and other outside agencies. Thus, as we learnedfrom our survey, herbalists more often meet and workwith RFD and NGO employees; help the RFD conduct theirwildlife censuses; take part in RFD- and NGO-sponsoredtraining related to the health, forests, or other issues; thinkthat NGOs do good work; meet with politicians; and vote(Table 3:3.12–3.19).

If shamans are “bad” and “superstitious” natives in cur-rent government discourses—in one case, the lead authorand his surveyors were chastised by a local government offi-cial for asking questions related to spirits, witches, shamans,and other “backward” traditions and “superstitions”—thenherbalists are “good” and “authentic” natives from certainstate points of view. In various outsider discourses related toecodevelopment plans for wildlife conservation and devel-opment, shamans are framed as potentially leading Indiaback to a primitive past whereas herbalists are viewed aspossessing knowledge traditions that will help India builda better future (see Figure 7).

Herbalists seem to be more able than shamans toovercome antagonism toward the RFD—whose new le-gal mandates have curtailed Adivasi access to the forestsof Phulwari—and indeed participate in state-sponsored

Snodgrass et al. • The Anthropology of Environmentality 309

FIGURE 7. The lead author found it difficult to convince local Bhilsthat he was not responsible for this foreign gift of edible oil.

conservation activities (Table 1:1.29–1.31). Herbal healerssee the RFD’s conservation and ecodevelopment agenda asaligning with their own interests, despite perceived corrup-tion, inefficiency, and insensitivity to local problems andconcerns. They are most motivated and best positioned toexploit a particular concatenation of local, regional, na-tional, and even global discourses and institutions. As DitaRam, one of our most important tribal informants who isboth a shaman-herbalist and RFD “cattle guard,” put it:

This thing with the janglat [the RFD], the way they tookour land, cut down our trees, and now stop us from theentering that new “sanctuary” with their guards and theirfines, it has been like that, a fight. Now we need an al-liance and friendship with these old enemies to fix this.This will help us move forward, together. That’s why Ihelp them when they count their animals, and whenthey need someone to patrol these woods. The time forfighting is over. [Field notes, November 15, 2005]

CONCLUSION: THEORY AND METHOD IN THEANTHROPOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTALITY

Our research in Phulwari ki Nal presents examples of in-dividuals who consciously limit resource overharvestingand environmental damage to their lands. It thus providesevidence for what we would call a conscious and inten-tionally maintained conservation ethic: an herbal healers’conservation “by design,” so to speak (Smith and Wish-nie 2000; see also Hunn et al. 2003; Ruttan and Mulder1999).

Nevertheless, we do not think that the form of natureconservation we have identified is entirely natural and en-demic to indigenous peoples, as some might imply (e.g.,Suzuki and Knudtson 1993). Nor do we believe that in-digenous conservation is only a romantic illusion of stateofficials (or of anthropologists), which indigenous peoplesemploy for political gain (Baviskar 1995, 1997). Instead,we have hoped to show how and why indigenous herbal-ists in particular pursue a certain form of proenvironmen-

tal thinking and practice that emerges at a unique junc-ture of native traditions and modern conditions. Becauseof, in part, their greater dependence on wild resources—as well as the particular identities, knowledge, and val-ues that emerge from such a dependence—religious spe-cialists with knowledge of healing plants are more likelyto share interests in common with the RFD and localNGOs promoting ecodevelopment. They are thus morelikely to adapt themselves to, work within, and indeed havetheir very consciousness penetrated by state and parastatestructures of environmental regulation, thus partaking ofwhat some might term a unique “alternative modernity”(Appadurai 1991) and a distinctive “hybrid” postcolonialidentity (Bhabha 1994).

In advancing these arguments, we wish to moveanthropological and political ecological debates from asimple discussion of whether indigenous persons areconservationists to the issue of cultural variation withinindigenous communities. In addition, we hope to demon-strate the utility of bringing poststructuralist theories ofenvironmentality—and more generally what is sometimesreferred to as “political ecology”—into dialogue with whatwe would call, lacking a better term, “cultural psychology”(Cole 1996; Shweder 2003).10 In this article, we have reliedmost explicitly on theories and survey methods drawn fromsocial psychology (e.g., Schultz et al. 2000; Stern 2000).However, our research is inspired by and in line with cul-tural psychological perspectives and techniques for system-atically measuring the variation of cultural knowledge andvalues across subgroups, such as “experts” and “nonex-perts” inhabiting the same area (see, e.g., Atran et al. 2002;Boster and Johnson 1989; Garro 1986; Johnson et al. 2002;Kempton et al. 1995; Romney et al. 1986; Weller 2008;Weller and Romney 1988). Indeed, we directly employ suchtheories and perspectives along with a cognitive anthropo-logical cultural “frames” or “models” approach to culture(D’Andrade 1995) in other writings (Snodgrass et al. 2008;Snodgrass and Tiedje 2008).

Wedding poststructuralist theories of environmental-ity to rigorous research methods provides, we believe, afuller understanding of the dynamics of state–local strug-gles for control over natural resources in contexts such asPhulwari ki Nal.11 Political ecological theories of environ-mentality illuminate the way that the meanings and valuesattached to nature, including our own analytical assump-tions and scholarly traditions, unfold in historically specificcontexts of power and inequality. They thus allow for theformulation of hypotheses truer to the political experiencesand economic concerns of our informants. By contrast,our reliance on statistical methods more common to cul-tural psychological approaches to social analysis—in whichknowledge and values are operationalized as variables thatcan be precisely measured and theories of power and resis-tance are used to generate hypotheses open to falsificationthrough empirical tests—helped to clarify otherwise invisi-ble relationships and associations between key variables ofinterest to our study.12

310 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

Of course, Foucault himself was suspicious of techno-scientific rationality and quantification, given the mannerthat statistics—from the German statistik, which literallymeans “science of the state”—have so frequently been usedto extend states’ abilities to discipline and normalize popu-lations.13 It would therefore be easy to see Foucault’s ideas,and thus also investigations of environmentality inspiredby his writings, to be opposed, and even antithetical, to ascientific environmental anthropology relying on hypoth-esis testing and quantification. However, we think that thiswould be a mistake. Modern nation-states can certainly usescience, and the science of numbers, to gain further controlover populations and natural resources. But statistics andquantification, when wedded with ethnographic perspec-tives and methods, can illuminate the form and meaning ofcultural diversity and political subalternity in contexts suchas Phulwari ki Nal. As such, science and quantification canalso generate knowledge that allows indigenous peoples tobetter understand—and thus also to potentially resist, re-work, and adapt for their own purposes—ecodevelopmentprojects that might otherwise disempower them.

JEFFREY G. SNODGRASS Department of Anthropology,Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787MICHAEL G. LACY Department of Sociology, ColoradoState University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787SATISH KUMAR SHARMA Rajasthan Forest Department,Udaipur, Rajasthan, India 313001YUVRAJ SINGH JHALA Department of Sociology andPrinciple’s Office, Bhupal Nobles’ P. G. College,Udaipur, Rajasthan, India 313001MOHAN ADVANI Department of Sociology, Mohan-lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India313001N. K. BHARGAVA Department of Sociology, Mohan-lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India313001CHAKRAPANI UPADHYAY Department of Sociology,Bhupal Nobles’ P. G. College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, In-dia 313001

NOTES

Acknowledgments. Research was sponsored by Colorado State Uni-versity and by the National Geographic Society (Grant #7791–05:“Spreading Saffron: Ritual and Forest Conservation in Rajasthan,India”). Special thanks go to the many employees of the RajasthanForest Department and the government of India who supportedour research. We are grateful for academic support offered by theadministration, faculty, and students of Bhupal Nobles’ P. G. Col-lege (Udaipur) and Mohanlal Sukhadia University (Udaipur). Wealso thank the American Institute of Indian Studies (New Delhi) forhospitality and the arrangement of research permissions, and thefollowing for comments, encouragement, and editorial assistance:Mathew Amster, Delene Beeland, Lance Gravlee, Sirisha Naidu,Kathy Pickering, Ann Russ, and Kristina Tiedje. Jeffrey Snodgrassalso presented earlier drafts of this article at the University of Wis-consin, Madison in September of 2007; the University of Colorado,Boulder in April of 2007; the Annual Meetings of the American An-

thropological Association in San Jose, California, in November of2006; and the inaugural conference of the Society for the Study ofReligion, Nature, and Culture held at the University of Florida inApril of 2006. Special thanks is given in these contexts to DennisMcGilvray and Kirin Narayan, as well as to the conference orga-nizers, participants, and audience members for their support anduseful feedback. Finally, we dedicate this article to Michael Meekerand Roy D’Andrade—two inspirations for our research—and to thevision of an anthropology that harmoniously integrates ethnogra-phy and scientific methodology, words and numbers.1. Bhils are found widely in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh,Gujarat, and Maharashtra, and in lesser numbers in the states ofKarnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Tripura, and thePunjab, as well as in Pakistan (Bhuriya 1986).2. Magra means “mountain” in local Tribal dialects. Baosi, al-though widely used to refer to deities and spirits, is more generally“a term of respect also used for elders who possessed supernaturalknowledge” (Unnithan-Kumar 1997:216).3. See Charlotte Seymour-Smith for a definition of the shamanas a “part-time religious specialist, whose abilities are based on di-rect personal experience” (1986:256; also cited in Unnithan-Kumar1997:215). Most shamans in Phulwari ki Nal, like other religiousspecialists, received only small remunerations for their work andwere also foragers, farmers, and herders along with their kinsmen.4. See, for example, Snodgrass 2006.5. The scale score was defined as the number of “correct” (knowl-edgeable) responses concerning herbal remedies in local use, with“correct” meaning an informant reported “a lot” or “some” knowl-edge of the remedy as opposed to none. This scale was quite in-ternally consistent, as indicated by a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93.A factor analysis of the tetrachoric correlation matrix of correct–incorrect responses to each item similarly supported the consis-tency of the summed measure.6. This was demonstrated by our qualitative interviews and ob-servations. We do also see a weak but nonsignificant associationbetween herbal knowledge and recent migration to the area (item3.9).7. The state insists that Adivasis prove pre-1983 residence to beallowed to stay within the sanctuary. Otherwise, they are labeled“encroachers.”8. We believe that herbal healers treat nature with respect becausethey understand that human welfare is deeply intertwined withthat of humans’ plant and animal “brothers.” It thus does not makesense to separate economic self-interest from altruistic concern forwildlife in this particular indigenous land ethic, an argument wepresent in detail elsewhere (Snodgrass et al. 2007).9. Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that Rajasthani kings wereoften most strongly motivated to conserve forests and that impov-erished locals struggled against kingly mandates limiting access toforest resources (Gold and Gujar 2002).10. In the Indian context, in addition to Agrawal 2005a, 2005b,and Gupta 1998; see, for example, Baviskar 1995, 2000; Poffen-berger and McGean 1996; Robbins 2000; and Sundar et al. 2001.11. For a poststructuralist critique of anthropologists’ lack of at-tention to method in such research, see Gupta 1998:34.12. For recent examples of first-rate research with similar aims toour own, see Atran and Medin 2008; Medin et al. 2006.13. See Darier 1996:589 for a discussion of this point.

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