Aditi Dhillon & Ajay Immanuel Gonji In his seminal essay Why Look at Animals? John Berger (2009) talks about how, in the past, people kept domestic animals because they were useful to them – as guard dogs, hunting dogs, mice-killing cats, and so on. Later, people began to keep animals regardless of their usefulness, a … Continue reading Disciplining Non-human Bodies in the City
Ajay Immanuel Gonji My first close encounter with roadkill was during fieldwork for my Master's internship, way back in 2013. I remember seeing the bloated body of a large male nilgai, fully intact, on the footpath of the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg – a 6-lane highway bifurcating the Sanjay Van city forest and the Jawaharlal … Continue reading Life in the Fastlane: Roadkill in the Anthropocene
Divya Mehra and Shiwani The Coronavirus pandemic which has affected almost every part of the world is considered to be the biggest economic and health crisis of the present time. To contain the spread of the Covid-19 disease, in the initial phases of the pandemic, many countries went into lockdown, resulting in the temporary suspension … Continue reading WATER QUALITY OF THE YAMUNA RIVER DURING THE FIRST LOCKDOWN
Ajay Immanuel Gonji For many of us, our first encounter with animals was probably at home with cats and dogs, or on the streets with cows, chickens and so on. These creatures may be called ‘domestic’ because their lifeworlds almost entirely revolve around human beings. On the other hand are creatures that are collectively referred … Continue reading Exploring the Behaviour of Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji In a previous blog article, I had mentioned that in many Indian cities, there exists a certain shared precarity between poor humans and non-humans in access and rights to the city, and both groups are often similarly excluded (Narayanan & Bindumadhav, 2019). In this present article, I wish to elaborate on this … Continue reading Rights to a ‘World-class’ City
Ajay Immanuel Gonji Urban Landscapes and Wildlife Urban landscapes are unique in that they represent one of the most managed and domesticated landscapes on the planet (Kareiva et al., 2007) that have been modified to fulfil not just our needs but also our wants. However, interestingly, Urban landscapes, by their very nature, also offer distinct … Continue reading Unique Disposition of Urban Wildlife
Himanshu Choudhery With the advancement of technologies over the past several years, the field of animal conservation has significantly evolved. Earlier, with the limitation of proper tools, there were many impediments to conservation programmes. Now, with the help of new tools such as bio-logging and bio-telemetry, camera traps, drones, sound recorders and advanced digital technologies, … Continue reading Understanding the Sounds of Animals
Himanshu Choudhery Worldwide, the field of biological conservation has been increasingly seeing the involvement of people of all ages. From amateur wildlife explorers to the more experienced ones, everyone is actively contributing to the conservation of biodiversity. This active participation and collaboration of the general public with professionals in scientific research is known as citizen science. … Continue reading Conservation Through Citizen Science
Vijaylakshmi Suman The rise of the pandemic resulted in people being confined to their homes for months. Since then, a lot of news has emerged where people in the city had witnessed instances of 'reclamation by nature'. For some, it was a sign of reclamation and recovery, while some quoted this as an absence of … Continue reading Locust In The City
Shiwani Maps are extremely handy tools that can be used to visualize and illustrate a wide variety of complex data, that make interpretation of geographical information an engaging process. It helps us in making sense of comprehensive spatial relationships simultaneously with temporal changes. There was a time when mapping changes, accessing and studying remote areas … Continue reading How to Map Changes Using Landviewer – A Step by Step Guide
