Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019)
Release Date: November 9, 2025
Host: Kate Hartman
Guest: Dr. Karine Gagné

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth interview with Dr. Karine Gagné about her book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas, which examines the entangled relationships of reciprocity, care, and morality that connect Ladakh's human communities, their animals, land, and especially glaciers. The conversation delves into how these relationships are being challenged by rapid sociopolitical and environmental changes, including climate change, shifting economies, and internal migration.

Key Topics, Insights & Timestamps

1. Dr. Karine Gagné’s Path to Ladakh and the Book

• Background & Motivation ([02:58])
  • Originally trained in film, then worked with Tibetan NGOs in Dharamsala, which sparked her interest in social sciences and environmental anthropology.
  • Friendships with Tibetan refugees, especially herders, revealed the powerful role of land, animals, and landscape in people's sense of self and morality.
  • Desire to understand "people's relationship with the environment" and the human dimensions of climate change led her to Ladakh after considering Tibet inaccessible.
  • Fieldwork for the book was based on over 20 months in Ladakh.

“I grew up around fields and cows, but...this universe is your primary means of subsistence...it shapes how you see yourself in the world.” (B, [06:32])

2. Ethnographic Approach to Morality and Ethics

• Ethnography vs. Textual Focus ([10:18])
  • Gagné discusses why an ethnographic, lived approach to morality reveals insights missed by doctrinal or top-down Buddhist studies.
  • Notes how laypeople and educated specialists in Ladakh offer divergent interpretations for environmental changes—specialists often cite displeased deities; laypeople focus on everyday reciprocity and "carelessness."
  • Resistance among villagers to share their “uneducated” views, as the dominant voice privileges Buddhist textual “correctness” over lived moral realities.

“Some are aware that there is this sort of authoritative narrative out there and feel challenged by this...I would explain to people that my interest was in their own view, that there is no right or wrong answer here.” (B, [16:15])

• Limits of Doctrinal Focus
  • Dangers of assuming doctrine is universally absorbed or authoritative.
  • Everyday practical and embodied relations—working and caring for animals, land, glaciers—are crucial to Ladakhi ethics.

3. Introducing Ladakh: Place & Culture

• Geography, Demographics, and History ([20:36])
  • High-altitude, arid region in far north India, historically shaped by Tibetan Buddhism and Islam.
  • Research focused in the Sham area west of Leh, mainly Buddhist, with interviewees predominantly elders.
  • Ladakh’s transformation into a highly militarized border area since the Partition of India (1947) and post-1948 wars.

4. Fieldwork & Methodology

• Role of Research Assistant Namgyal ([27:22])
  • Namgyal’s unique background as an insider (heritage) and outsider (upbringing, education) enhanced research access and understanding.
  • His ability to connect with isolated elders fostered candid, sensitive interviews.

“[Namgyal] has a profound humanism...exceptional ability to connect with vulnerable people, especially elders who feel isolated.” (B, [32:10])

• Why Interview Elders? ([35:20])
  • Elders are "repositories of cumulative observations" over decades, crucial for tracking environmental and social change.

5. Traditional Livelihoods and Social Structures

• Life in Ladakh: Past and Present ([37:42])
  • Historically, a diversified economy reliant on agriculture, herding, and trade; polyandry common, supporting cooperative household labor.
  • Polyandry, now rare, was not just a response to poverty but enabled land conservation and shared work.

“Ladakhi often described polyandry as a system of cooperation...these small cooperative enterprises.” (B, [40:26])

• Post-Independence Changes ([41:30])
  • State formation and militarization led to new employment opportunities, migration to cities, and breakdown of traditional joint-family and cooperative labor arrangements.

6. Changing Moral Orders

• Transformation of Responsibility ([47:01])
  • Traditional moral order: care for land, animals, deities, family, and community were intertwined.
  • Economic shifts have led to perceptions of increased "abandonment" of land and animals, viewed by elders as moral decline.

“To be a moral person...is to strive towards the well-being of all these elements.” (B, [48:00])

7. Chapters in Focus

Chapter 1: The Loneliness of Winter ([52:07])

• Elders recall the pre-1948 era as “harsher but happier”—less material security, greater social cohesion, more secure roles for elders, and shared hardship.
• The end of forced labor and abject poverty is appreciated, yet social isolation, loss of intergenerational roles, and nostalgia for village life permeate narratives.

Chapter 2: The 1948 War and Ethical Dilemmas ([58:00])

• The India-Pakistan war brought occupation, violence, trauma, and forced Ladakhis into complex ethical positions regarding armed resistance, violence, and kinship.

"The choice to fight...meant engaging in the moral wrong of war. But if you remain neutral...you risk losing your land." (B, [67:34])

• Many now frame environmental misfortunes as karmic repercussions for wartime transgressions.

Chapter 4: Agricultural Ritual and Its Erosion ([71:02])

• Case study of the Skinju ritual for glaciers; non-performance reveals impact of:
  • Devaluation of local ritual in favor of textual/orthodox Buddhism
  • Migration and diminished collective capacity ("you need people to have free time")
  • Dislocation of agrarian temporalities by modern capitalist/rhythms.

Chapter 5: Pastoral Landscape and Ethics of Reciprocity ([77:14])

• Explores how active engagement in herding literally "produces" landscape, fosters unique skills, temporalities, and strong attachments to land and animals.
• Ethics of care are enacted through relationships of reciprocity with animals.
  • Selling animals (often for slaughter) due to economic or physical necessity is experienced as painful "abandonment."

“[Herding is] more than just an economic activity...at the heart...are relations of care and reciprocity between animals and human.” (B, [82:13])

Chapter 6: Moral Ecology of Glaciers ([85:30])

• Elders explicitly link the health of glaciers to collective moral conduct.
• Loss of daily, embodied work (herding, farming) is seen as eroding not just economic but moral relationships to landscape.

“Many elders see in working the land something crucial to developing a certain moral orientation...” (B, [88:12])

8. Intergenerational Dilemmas and Future Challenges

• Patterns of Abandonment & Adaptation ([91:12])
  • Dilemmas from declining pastoral/agricultural practices; emotional, moral, and practical rifts between generations.
  • Recognition that youth face their own struggles—elders’ perspectives may be colored by nostalgia or unadjusted expectations.
  • Community “addresses” change by confronting predicaments and living with these unresolved tensions.

9. Future Research ([96:56])

• Dr. Gagné’s next project is based in Zanskar, another Himalayan region, focusing on water stress, state interventions, and how mobility (traveling on ice, footpaths) produces climate knowledge that complements scientific understandings.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ethnography’s Value:

  “There has to be room for various interpretations...if we start from the premise that there is only one right way, we strip human beings from their creative potential in understanding life processes.” (B, [15:19])

• On Attachment to Place:

  “If you stop this work...how do you develop attachment for the glacier if it becomes this unknown figure you don't see?” (B, [89:45])

• On Changing Times:

  “Traditionally, elders continue to play a vital role in the household...but this security net is today rendered increasingly fragile by an economy that drives people outside the villages.” (B, [54:18])

• On Ritual Erosion:

  “To perform this type of ritual, you need an expert...but monks are learning orthodox Buddhism, not these rituals villagers were traditionally performing.” (B, [73:00])

Tone and Language

The conversation is reflective, warm, and detailed, blending narrative ethnography with analytical insight. Gagné shares both academic arguments and human stories, keeping a respectful and empathetic tone towards her interlocutors in Ladakh.

Final Reflections

Dr. Karine Gagné’s Caring for Glaciers brings to light the deep interconnections between land, animals, community, and ecology in Ladakh, foregrounding the importance of everyday relationships and feelings of care as the ground for moral life. As ecological and social ruptures accelerate, this study offers both documentation and a meditation on what is lost—and how communities struggle to address change—when modes of care are threatened.

Recommended for: Anthropologists, environmental humanists, Buddhist studies scholars, and any reader interested in Himalayan societies or lived approaches to ethics and ecology.

For a fuller exploration of these themes and stories, listeners are encouraged to read the book itself.