Doctoral Dissertation Research: Claiming Ground: Indigenous Politics, Religion, and Human-Environment Relations in a Sacred Landscape.

这个博士论文研究项目调查了神圣景观的概念被用来要求领土的方式，以及这些过程对人与环境关系的影响。土著社区和国家之间在领土、环境准入、土地使用和资源管理方面的斗争有多种形式，而且往往是在日益增长的全球土著权利运动中发生的。在这些关于人与环境关系的斗争中，神圣景观的概念越来越多地被动员起来，作为民族身份和领土的体现，但这种主张对景观被具体化为神圣景观的社区内人与环境关系的影响仍未得到探索。本论文项目假设，动员神圣的景观，在高度政治化的土著权利运动的背景下，重塑和重新定义人与环境的关系的重要方式。本论文的研究是在一个概念框架内，借鉴了衔接理论，空间生产的概念和政治生态学的方法，试图回答以下问题：（1）如何通过神圣景观的概念与全球土著政治的领土要求？(2)神圣景观的生产和再生产以何种方式构成了土著人的身份和领土？以及（3）这一过程以何种方式（重新）塑造了社区内的环境获取、土地使用和资源管理？ 本研究采用了一套质性研究方法，包括焦点小组和半结构化的深入访谈，参与者观察和尼泊尔案例研究的文本分析。 这项研究有助于编写关于土著政治、身份和领土以及宗教的多学科文献。此外，本论文的研究工作，使宗教研究的关键方法到宗教地理学的更传统的框架，以促进宗教在人与环境的关系和landses.Beyond研究的知识和理论贡献的作用的理解，这个项目的研究结果可以影响国家和国际政策有关的神圣景观和土著社区。该项目有助于培训尼泊尔的学生，他们将作为研究助理参与该项目。 研究结果将在尼泊尔当地、国家和国际学术会议上以及通过学术期刊上的出版物传播。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该项目将提供支持，使有前途的博士生建立一个独立的研究生涯。

This doctoral dissertation research project investigates the ways in which notions of sacred landscapes are used to claim territory, and the effects of those processes on human-environment relationships. Struggles between indigenous communities and states over territory, environmental access, land use, and resource management take a number of forms, and are often situated within the growing global indigenous rights movement. Out of these struggles over human-environment relations, notions of sacred landscapes are increasingly mobilized as embodiments of ethnic identity and territoriality, yet the effects of such claims on human-environment relations within communities whose landscapes are reified as sacred remain unexplored. This dissertation project hypothesizes that mobilizations of sacred landscapes, in the context of highly politicized indigenous rights movements, reshape and redefine human-environment relations in important ways. Situated within a conceptual framework that draws on a theory of articulation, the concept of the production of space, and a political ecology approach, this dissertation research seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How are territorial claims articulated with global indigenous politics through notions of sacred landscapes?; (2) In what way does the production and reproduction of sacred landscapes structure indigenous identity and territoriality?; and (3) In what ways does this process (re)shape environmental access, land use, and resource management within a community? This project uses a suite of qualitative research methods, including focus groups and semi-structured in-depth interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis in a case study in Nepal. The research contributes to multidisciplinary literatures on indigenous politics, identity and territory, and religion. Further, this dissertation research works to bring critical approaches to religious studies into more traditional framing of the geography of religion in order to advance understandings of the role of that religion plays in human-environment relations and landscapes.Beyond the intellectual and theoretical contributions of the research the findings of this project can influence national and international policy regarding sacred landscapes and indigenous communities. The project contributes to the training of students in Nepal who will be engaged in the project as research assistants. Results of the research will be disseminated locally in Nepal and at national and international academic conferences and via publications in scholarly journals. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising doctoral student to establish an independent research career.