Beyond binaries: negotiating resource futures in the Himalayas

IF 3.5 2区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Geoforum Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-03 DOI:10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104556

Udisha Saklani

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article re-examines hydropower politics in Nepal’s Himalayas through the lens of affective governance and financialised subjectivities, arguing that civic engagement around dams is shaped not only by material stakes but also by emotion, memory, and strategic calculation. Drawing on fieldwork from August 2019 to February 2022, supported by archival and policy analysis, it foregrounds how benefit-sharing mechanisms, national energy narratives, and lived experiences, spanning hope to trauma, co-produce the legitimacy and contestation of hydropower. Rather than viewing dams as straightforward impositions, the paper presents a contingent and historically grounded account of how rural communities navigate, negotiate, and actively influence energy development in the face of uneven power relations and development pressures.

The paper makes three core contributions. First, it shows how benefit-sharing schemes function not only as distributive mechanisms, but as affective tools of governance, generating conditional forms of alignment with state-led projects. Second, it traces how narratives of energy autonomy and national pride are strategically mobilised to justify large-scale infrastructure projects. Third, it examines how land speculation, ambivalence, and uneven consent emerge through shifting valuations of land, risk, and opportunity. In doing so, the article contributes to wider debates on infrastructure, energy justice, and the affective politics of development in the Anthropocene.

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超越二元对立：喜马拉雅山资源未来的谈判

本文通过情感治理和金融主体性的视角重新审视了尼泊尔喜马拉雅地区的水电政治，认为围绕大坝的公民参与不仅受到物质利益的影响，还受到情感、记忆和战略计算的影响。利用2019年8月至2022年2月的实地调查，在档案和政策分析的支持下，它展望了利益分享机制、国家能源叙事和生活经验如何从希望到创伤，共同产生水电的合法性和争议。本文并没有将大坝视为直接的强加，而是以一种偶然的、基于历史的方式，描述了农村社区在面对不平衡的权力关系和发展压力时，是如何导航、谈判和积极影响能源发展的。本文有三个核心贡献。首先，它展示了利益分享计划如何不仅作为分配机制发挥作用，而且作为有效的治理工具发挥作用，产生与国家主导的项目相一致的有条件形式。其次，它追溯了能源自主和民族自豪感是如何被战略性地动员起来，为大型基础设施项目辩护的。第三，它考察了土地投机、矛盾心理和不一致的同意是如何通过土地、风险和机会的估值变化而出现的。在这样做的过程中，本文有助于对基础设施、能源正义和人类世发展的影响政治进行更广泛的讨论。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Geoforum GEOGRAPHY-

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

5.70%

发文量

201

期刊介绍： Geoforum is an international, inter-disciplinary journal, global in outlook, and integrative in approach. The broad focus of Geoforum is the organisation of economic, political, social and environmental systems through space and over time. Areas of study range from the analysis of the global political economy and environment, through national systems of regulation and governance, to urban and regional development, local economic and urban planning and resources management. The journal also includes a Critical Review section which features critical assessments of research in all the above areas.