Research

INTRODUCTION

It was the 25th of September 2012, five farmers were gathering in Tache village, of the Nhāson Valley, to assess Tam Bahadur’s wheat field that had been damaged by his neighbor’s horses. I was talking with Tam Bahadur when he suddenly remarked, “Grasses are for livestock, and grains are for humans. If livestock damages our grains, what should we eat?” By this remark, Tam Bahadur was giving an important message to readers: the protection of crops is not just a matter of farming, but it is embedded with the survival value for the villagers. His statement, therefore, has compelled me to think about the rationality behind the farmers’ practices and strategies to care for and protect their standing crops in the valley. This is the subject of the study.

Caring for standing crops is an adaptive behavior, integral to the Himalayan culture, through which the people of the region have been living in harsh climatic and topographical conditions for generations. Besides adaptive behavior, there are also links with societal values and belief systems. Thus, caring for standing crops is a system that interconnects different components like technical, social, and cultural sub-systems. Such a locally rooted system developed for caring for standing crops connects two isolated fields—science and society, meanings and reality, and religion and economy—in a single framework, recognizes their interdependency, and addresses them together (Liu et al. 2015). This holistic approach is called a social-ecological approach that does not view humans as external to an ecosystem but as a part of it (Berkes and Folke 2000). Such an integrated approach creates a more robust ecological framework for environmental study (Goldman et al. 2011) as well as gives a better understanding than a linear and unidirectional framework (Ostrom 2009, Guerrero et al. 2018).

There are two accounts of caring for standing crops. One comes from modern science, particularly agronomy, and the other from traditional/indigenous ecological knowledge. The first, representing modernity, emphasizes technical, rational, and universal ways such as timely watering of plants, using fertilizers, and controlling weeds, diseases, insects, and so on, to care for standing crops. It prioritizes the usage of material artifacts, rational knowledge, and external inputs to ensure good productivity. In other words, minimizing the observed potential harmful effects on crops is more important to agronomists when caring for standing crops. It is the task of science to assess and disclose sources of potential harm, identify measurable correlations, assess the probabilities of harm, and provide rational suggestions (Ghimire et al. 2015, Kumar et al. 2020). This perspective, however, represents a dominant cultural perspective (Berkes 2012), which is useful for certain purposes, although it is one-sided and incomplete in understanding the complex array of relationships with physical surroundings (Basso 1996). For the protection of crops, many traditional societies have cultural values, beliefs, and practices (Huber and Pedersen 1997, Campbell 2013, Gagné 2020), social institutions, and mechanisms (Basnet and Chaudhary 2017, Poudel 2020a). However, modern sciences ignore meanings, ethics, morality, attitudes, and actions intertwined with caring for the environment (Gagné 2019), including associated socio-cultural values, indigenous activities, and practices that people have and do to protect the standing crops from recognized threats. Such a combination of knowledge-practice-belief is described as a traditional ecological knowledge system (Berkes 2012), and the concepts of environmental care are rooted in it (Menzies et al. 2024).

Care and risk appear as two sides of the same coin and are innately intertwined. Risk is a context matter (Castree et al. 2014) and culturally perceived (Douglas 1992, Wisner et al. 2004, Sherry et al. 2018, Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2020) and subjectively defined (Gagné 2020). It strongly contradicts the explanation of modernity (Vedwan 2006), which emphasizes quantitative facts and figures (Innis 2008). It demands an alternative perspective that focuses on indigenous or non-modern ontology perspectives, which have different explanations for the human-nature relationship than a modern knowledge system (Ingold 2000, Cruickshank 2005, Nadasdy 2007, Govindarajan 2016, Holbraad and Pedersen 2017, Gagné 2019, Childs et al. 2021, Smith 2021, Poudel 2024, Wouters 2024). Globally, this alternative perspective has been oppressed and paralyzed by the “Euro-Western science-to-policy paradigm” (Williams and Golovnev 2015:206).

In this paper, I have used the concept of “care” to understand crop protection behaviors in the Nhāson Valley. In this process, I follow the ideas of K. Sivaramakrishnan’s notion of ethics of nature, K. Gagné’s notion of “an ethic of care,” S. Crate’s “spiritual worldview for caring for the land,” and S. West and colleagues’ notion of “rational values for care and stewardship.” For Sivaramakrishnan, ethics of nature is “as a set of abiding concerns and guiding principles that humans ponder, articulate, and deploy in their interactions with the non-human world” (2015:1263). Gagné has used the concept of “care” in a more expansive term, as “nonhuman” rather than “nature” or “the environment.” For her, “the notion of care refers to a mode of practical engagement informed by a sense of obligation and responsibility toward the more-than-human” (2019:7). For Crate, the “notion of care” combines cosmology and everyday practice. She argues, “The sense of obligation towards the supernatural beings and the hard work and diligence of human beings make them responsible for caring rather than individuals, kin groups, or communities” (2008:582). Similarly, West et al. (2018) suggest three key rational approaches, i.e., sense of place, dwelling, and biocultural diversity to care within stewardship that emerges from social-ecological relations, embodied in the practices and activities, and situated in the generalized ethic or individualized attitude that is collective phenomenon.

When the farmers of the Nhāson Valley speak of caring for standing crops, they often emphasize more responsibility to care for them even though they have gradually been losing the economic significance of crops over the last few decades (Poudel 2016). Residents of the valley are making their living through other non-agricultural activities like jobs, businesses, collecting herbal medicines, foreign employment, working in infrastructure development projects, and so on. It does not mean that the cultivation of crops has not supported them to ensure their survival in the harsh environment. It also contributes to sustaining their livelihood without which it is impossible to live. Thus, it is also a moral or ethical recognition of poor farmscapes, chances of food scarcity, and one’s own responsibility toward other individuals or communities to save their lives by protecting from the possible damage of crops. Hence, caring for standing crops is strongly rooted in the principle of reciprocity (the concept used by Gagné 2019). In the valley the concept of reciprocity is rooted in two principles. The first principle is obligation for compensation, i.e., “I pay, and in return, they will pay,” and the second, obligation to protect, i.e., “I save their crop field, and they will save in return my crop field.” Under the first principle, each household that receives the compensation for damage is under the obligation to pay the compensation for damage as a return at some future time. As per the second principle, each household cares for others’ crop fields from possible damage by their livestock and saves in return their crop fields from others. This concept is ultimately rooted in the principle of “saving to save” in a harsh environment (the concept used by Chhetri 1995) through avoiding ecological collapse, social disintegration, and conflict (Shiva 2014). It does not mean only saving to save, but ultimately caring for standing crops for a complete return of the planting.

The research presented here uses an ethnographic study in the Nhāson Valley of Nepal to understand the local practices of caring for standing crops. The study acknowledges the indigenous notion of “care” within which agents of threats on standing crops are identified, and explores the solutions practiced in the local context. This paper focuses on three key issues: to document the perceptions of risks associated with the standing crops among the farmers of the Nhāson Valley; to explore the practices and methods adopted by the farmers to care for standing crops; and to investigate the rationality of indigenous practices for caring for the standing crops with reference to nexus between ethics and rationality.

METHODS

Study area

This study was conducted in the Nhāson Valley (now consisting of two local units, namely Chame and Nashong) located in the southeast of Manang district of Nepal (see Fig. 1). It covers a wide vertical zone from 1645 meters (Tal) to 8125 meters (Manasulu) from sea level, reflecting steep topography. The valley’s name “Nhāson” derives from the Gurung words nhā (village) and son (three), meaning three villages. They are Tache, Nache, and Tilche, established around the 11th century (Poudel 2016). Besides these three oldest villages, there were 13 villages in 2018. They were formed in three ways: (i) after the arrival of new groups from the north (2) and south (3), (ii) after the split of the settlements (2), and (iii) after the expansion of tourism in the valley (6).

In 2010, the valley recorded a maximum temperature of 22.3 °C, and the minimum was -5.8 °C, with an average annual precipitation of 300 mm. However, both scientific data and local observations have indicated a gradually increasing trend in these climatic parameters (Poudel 2020b). This increasing trend is posing challenges to the existing social-ecological systems, including the traditional agricultural calendar and practices, that have been long dependent on the ideal weather in the valley.

Ethnographic approach

The paper is a product of more than nine months of ethnographic study between the years 2012 to 2022. During that period, I visited the site five times. My first visit was in 2012, and I stayed for six months at Tache village and frequently visited other settlements that were 20 to 120 minutes walking distance. The second, third, fourth, and last visits were in 2014, 2017, 2018, and 2022, respectively, wherein I stayed for more than three months altogether. On each visit, I visited each village and had discussions with the villagers.

Victor Turner pointed out three methodological approaches for study. They are (i) external forms and observable characteristics; (ii) interpretations offered by specialists (here ritual specialists) and by the layman; and (iii) significant context largely worked out by the anthropologist (Turner 1967) in the process of interpretation. I also followed his methodological approaches for collecting data and interpretation. I generated data by sitting/observing, talking, and listening to the people, what anthropologists call “being there” (Geertz 1997, Roncoli et al. 2009). I observed the physical settings of nature and types of agricultural lands, the weather conditions at different times of the year, cropping calendars, cropping practices in different agricultural lands, and caring practices. Besides those, I also observed three rituals, namely, yonkhuba at Nache village, rheepaba at Ghyalanchok, and thakheba at Tache village performed for caring for the standing crops in different periods in a year. Similarly, I also observed the wooden fences in each village to control the unintended entrance of livestock. In 2012, I observed the monitoring of the loss of standing wheat crops by the unintended entrance of livestock on a wheat field and participated as an observer in the whole process of implementing the thiti (customary laws), especially the negotiation process between crop owners and livestock owners, and the role of mediators in it.

After observing the socio-cultural and technical aspects of caring for standing crops, I talked with the common people about why they practice different systems of caring for their crops and their social, cultural, and economic values in their everyday lives. Then, I talked with two ritual specialists (a Jhakri and a Lama) about the performing rituals and their meanings, and 14 local people (members of the father group and thiti committee) about the social systems such as sets of rules and norms associated with caring for standing crops. In addition, informal conversations with other villagers were carried out. The Nhāson people spoke the Nepali language well, so all communication was conducted in the Nepali language.

I made field notes of my observations, in-depth interviews, and informal conversations, which were transcribed later. Based on my observations and informal conversations with informants, I manually categorized the content into three themes, i.e., fencing (technical), thiti (social), and performing rituals (cultural), and described the themes and finally produced the meanings by putting them in local contexts of the valley (see Table 1).

RESULTS

Agricultural land use practices in the valley

Agriculture is one of the main livelihood strategies of the people of the Nhāson Valley. Maize, naked barley, buckwheat, wheat, potatoes, Himalayan beans, and green vegetables are the main crops grown in the valley, and most of these products are consumed by households. The agricultural products are also shared with kith and kin, fulfilling economic needs whilst maintaining social relations.

Agricultural land is limited and occupies only 0.46% of the district’s total land coverage (GoN 2001). The limited agricultural lands and harsh climate of the valley have forced the local people to adopt alternative livelihood options, including pastoralism, trade and business, services, and out-migration. In addition, low agricultural productivity and short growing seasons force them to develop complex socio-political institutions to govern individuals’ behaviors in society and to manage the limited resources for sustainability (Poudel 2020a).

Each village has categorized agricultural lands into three categories: uplands, midlands, and lowlands. They follow both land rotation and crop rotation practices, meaning they do not cultivate any crops in all agricultural lands at a given season but plant different crops in different seasons. In the uplands, they grow either maize or wheat once a year but do not grow the same crops each year. In the midlands and lowlands, they grow three times over two years, ensuring that the same crop is not repeated back-to-back. They leave the land barren between two seasons, especially in the fall and winter (see Table 2). It reflects the maximum utilization of limited available farmlands in a short agricultural season to maintain harmony with livestock management for continuity of livelihood. Vast indigenous ecological knowledge about the local micro-environment, climate, vegetation, and the fitness and performance of particular crops has made them possible.

In the valley, individual households do not have the right to plant crops independently on their farmland. Agricultural practices are governed by village-level socio-political institutions. By the early 1990s, it was called the Jimmawal system, and now the Bau-samuh (father group). The father group decides what and where to plant. Through community decision, all households plant the same crops on the particular farmlands in the given season. The practice not only regulates the village agro-economy but also intertwines with the Himalayan pastoral management system (rotational grazing), crop diversification, sharing the risks of crop loss by planting a single crop by each household, regulating the possible disputes among villagers that may otherwise arise because of domestic animals destroying the unharvested fields because of variation in the sowing time, and optimum utilization of limited resources within a short-growing climate. In other words, this community control system does not only regulate the farmers’ cropping behavior in the village but also seems to be a risk-averse strategy to minimize the chance of losses of agricultural production by domestic livestock, wild animals, and birds because of the sowing of different crops in time variations by different households. Of course, such shared cultural values, i.e., thiti of land-use practices (the plantation of crops at the same time in the same field), have been developed by the farmers of the Nhāson Valley, and also rest on the principle of “saving to save” in a harsh environment, helping them to thrive them for many generations to the present.

Caring practices for standing crops

For the farmers of the Nhāson Valley, caring for standing crops is not limited to instrumental rationality such as building a fence to control livestock or wildlife, using pesticides to control insects, and using chemical fertilizers. They see threats upon their crops from humans, animals, and bad spirits/deities and assess divergent social, technical, and cultural systems to minimize the risks (see Fig. 2). Thus, practices for caring for standing crops are characterized by risks from diverse agencies and remedied by a specific practice. Moreover, crop caring practices of the valley are rooted in the principle of knowledge-belief-practice interaction (the phrase is borrowed from Berkes 2012).

Figure 2 presents the caring practices for standing crops in the Nhāson Valley. They look like a triangle. Each angle stands for different threats. An angle representing the social aspect shows the threat to standing crops from human beings and their behaviors, and the solution is social regulation or implementation of customary laws. The cultural aspect sees a threat upon crops from bad spirits and the unhappiness of deities, and the rituals that can cure it. The third angle is the technical system that assesses risks on crops from livestock and wildlife that can be managed technologically. By ignoring one of the spheres, we cannot capture the notion of care that the farmers of the valley have and do in their everyday lives to protect the crops from possible harmful effects.

Social systems for caring for standing crops

Each village has made thitis (customary laws) to protect planted crops from unintended entry of livestock into the farmlands. Thitis regulate the movement of livestock, especially their free entrance into croplands and fallow lands before the day they are opened to livestock for grazing. To implement the thiti at the village, a thiti committee is formed, which works under the Bau-samuh. In the committee, the number of members varies as per the requirement. Typically the number ranges from six to nine members who are selected annually based on consensus, considering efficiency and commitment. The committee is responsible for controlling the unintended entrance of livestock into farmlands and grazing lands. The lands are either private or government in legal terms, but they are community lands in the local social context regulated by the thiti system or social institution in the valley.

Thiti is both a responsibility and a compulsion for a member to protect standing crops from possible damage. As a responsibility, making a fence to control livestock’s free and unintended entrance into the farmlands is an individual household’s duty as a community member. Each household in the village must make a fence in the entrance alleys of livestock if attached to his/his farmlands; otherwise, the household shall be subject to punishment. The punishment consists of not only a “penalty” but a “duty” for each villager. The Thiti-committee imposes penalties requiring the wrongdoers to pay the penalty in cash and kind to avoid the thiti. Figure 3 presents fine amounts for livestock owners for the unintended entrance of their livestock in the restricted field in 2012.

The villagers reported that the fine rates are not static and they can be changed whenever members of society deem it necessary. For example, the fine was only NRs. 5, 10, and 20 for goat/sheep, cattle, and mule/horse, respectively, in 2011 at Tache village. Villagers lost their crops and fodder many times from livestock because of the small amount of the fines. Therefore, in 2012, Bau-Samuh decided to increase the fines 10 times for the unintended entrance of livestock in the farmlands.

In addition to fines, livestock owners are mandated to pay compensation (known as armalbharne) to the crop owners for the damages. This is judged by considering two dimensions: the amount of damage and time of damage. The first is calculated based on actual damage, and the latter is the damage amount based on the different stages of the growth of crops, i.e., damage in the germinating stage, seedlings growing stage, flowering stage, and harvesting stage (Poudel 2016). The compensation for the possible loss is determined in three ways: (i) consensus between two parties, (ii) lottery method, and (iii) mediation by knowledgeable persons. Primarily, the amount of compensation is determined by negotiation between/among the owners of livestock and crops. On 25 September 2012, for instance, it was about 7:15 am; K. Gurung, a neighbor, entered N. Gurung’s kitchen and noticed him in the wheat field that had been damaged by the horses of N. Gurung and three other neighbors. Soon after, both the owners of the horses (N. Ghale and I. B. Gurung) and wheat field (T. B. Gurung) and two knowledgeable persons (I. J. Gurung and K. J. Gurung) gathered at the square and went out to observe and monitor the wheat-field at Yumda and Samjhe where horses had damaged the standing wheat-field. They monitored the field by looking everywhere the horses had grazed. After that, the owners of the wheat lands and the horses discussed and agreed to pay 10.5 pathi (42 kg) of wheat to the crop owner. The amount of compensation was divided among the horses’ owners per horse head. This resolution was possible because most of the villagers are tied by kin relations to each other.

The second method is mediation between parties. A knowledgeable person mediates with the parties to reach a consensus on final compensation for the loss. The third method, which is only used when the negotiation and mediation fail, is the lottery method. Each party (the crop-destroyed and crop-destroyer) and mediator (knowledgeable persons) write the likely damaged amounts of crops on paper separately. Then, the livestock owner is given the written slip to pick up. The amount mentioned on the picked-up paper shall be the final compensation amount that has to be paid to the crop owner(s) by the livestock owner(s).

Technical aspects of caring for standing crops

In the valley, erecting snares, firing a gun, hanging white rags on crop fields, watching and shouting by sitting on a high platform, and fencing the livestock trails are common methods for controlling the unintended invasion of wildlife and domestic livestock in cropping fields. The technologies and behavior patterns vary from one type of wildlife to another. For example, they hang white rags tied on a long rope in cornfields to scare crows away. This method is not useful for scaring monkeys away. They make a platform on crop fields for watching and moving monkeys away by shouting. An individual household is responsible for these activities. The villagers reported that protecting maize and potatoes from a Himalayan black bear is more challenging. They chase them away from the field using both snares and firing guns collectively.

The different methods applied to chase wildlife away from the fields reveal the convergence among technology, environment, and social behaviors. This shows that the methods of the cultural ecology developed by Julian Steward in 1955 are still relevant to some extent. This is because an individual household uses small technology like hanging white cloths and shouting by sitting on tall huts to scare birds and small wildlife away to protect the crops from possible damage. Still, they do it collaboratively to chase large wildlife away.

In contrast to the control of wildlife, the villagers make fences in the livestock corridor trail to protect standing crops from domestic livestock. This is a combination of technical and social components. Each landowner makes fence(s) with local resources like wooden poles and Himalayan bamboo on the livestock trails to control the accidental entrance of livestock on farmlands. This is a household’s duty. The thiti committee is responsible for properly implementing it. After planting the crop, the committee informs the villagers to do it. The committee fines those who do not follow the rules.

Cultural aspect of caring for standing crops

In the valley, rheepaba, yonkhuba, and thakheba rituals are associated with caring for standing crops and good productivity. Two rituals, namely raheepaba and thakheba are performed for removing the evil spirits. It is believed that evil spirits in households, villages, farmland, and herds are the causes of misfortune, i.e., illness, natural calamities, low productivity, bad weather, loss of livestock, decline of herds, etc. According to ritual priests, evil spirits only visit at night, and only shamans can speak to evil spirits and control them. Hence, shamans organize these rituals at night, offering them back things by making effigies from black grains like black lentils and bitter buckwheat. After performing the rituals, effigies are thrown away from the village or dug up in a ditch. The activities of bad spirits and their influences increase in the village because of a lack of morality and ethics, i.e., slaughtering of cows, marriage beyond one’s own group, suicide, unnatural death, and disrespect to local deities (Poudel 2018).

In contrast, the people of the valley perform the yonkhuba ritual to invite the deities. This ritual is performed by a lama in the daytime by offering white food (barley). The lama invites the deities through chanting mantras written in religious text, and the villagers assist them by offering a pot full of grains and food to the deities and listening to the text. The observance of the ritual, chanting the mantras, feeding the deities, and offering gifts make the deities happy and therefore brings prosperity and good omens to households, villages, and herds. In return, it is believed, deities give grains and hay, and protect people, crops, and livestock from bad fortunes like diseases and natural calamities. They perform the ritual every year. This reflects that deities cannot give the villagers good omens freely, that there should not be any free gifts, but should be guided by the principle of reciprocity, i.e., give and take (Mauss 1990). Good crops, good productivity, good livestock, good weather, etc., are the result of ritual performance that makes deities happy and willing to give. Farmers’ hard work and diligence in caring for the crops and livestock is a secondary matter. This reflects that the control of threat is not in the hands of farmers but with the willingness of supernatural powers.

DISCUSSIONS

In her book Loving Nature, Kay Milton (2002) explores how people and communities develop a protective and caring relationship with nature. She synthesizes ideas from religion, science, and psychology. She suggests going beyond social and cultural contexts and seeing human beings as an organism in an environment and developing through their engagement with what they encounter. Similarly, Tim Ingold argues that human beings come to understand the world by perceiving it directly, not only through cultural interpretation (2000). The emergence of different practices of caring for standing crops in the valley reveals the awareness and recognition of the possibility of food scarcity without proper care of cultivated farmlands. The practices emerged as the result of insufficient food production because of fragile landscapes, limited agricultural lands, and a short growing season in the past. In this sense, caring for standing crops is essentially embedded in the notion of “saving to save” in that they directly encountered hunger in their past lives. Therefore, it is inherently action-oriented, rooted in a rational conception of the well-being of self and the well-being of others (Jax et al. 2018).

Shiva (2014) argues that caring moves around the values of avoiding ecological collapse, social disintegration, and conflict. In the past, the ancestors of the valley might have encountered food scarcity due to damage from domestic animals, wildlife, and natural calamities. Several generations might have faced severe food scarcity because of failure of crop production and damage by animals. They might have come to the conclusion that it would be impossible to live without protecting standing crops from potential harm caused by both seen and unseen forces. Then they developed practices like the thiti system, fencing, and performing rituals, and successive generations began to follow them. Even today, they are following these practices to protect the limited available resources and it has become a source of the indigenous way of knowing and recognizing the fragile resources on which livelihood depends (Agrawal 2005). Therefore, the present cultural practices including the caring for standing crops can be useful to assume the past reality of the mountain dwellers. This is called the “dwelling perspective” (Ingold 2000). It suggests that the primary condition of human existence is not “knowing” the world from the outside, but rather “being-in-the-world” through embodied engagement and experience (West et al. 2018).

Cultural practices for good yield give us new meaning to how Himalayan dwellers see their environment. These practices extend far beyond the realm of modern science or an objective reality. It has come to stand for an alternative, non-modern ontology, a counterpoint to naturalism, the hegemonic cosmology of modernity (Århem 2016). Actually, ritual performance may or may not contribute to yield productivity, but such practices can definitely increase people’s connectedness with the environment, create awareness about the environment, and recognize the environment. It reminds us that the environment is not only the dwelling of humans and animals for the Himalayan people but also of divine beings who need to be acknowledged in interactions with the environment (Campbell 2013, Gagné 2019, 2020, Yü and de Maaker 2021, Wouters 2024). This idea rejects the monopoly of the conception of modernity on human-nature relationships. It emphasizes an indigenous/traditional approach for caring (Jax et al. 2018).

The findings presented in the text reveal that the paying penalty is more than a form of compensation for damage. This is a concept that embodies both respect for others’ property and the ethics of caring for standing crops. The system instills consciousness among the livestock owners to prevent their cattle from entering other farmlands. Such social rules help them protect standing crops from possible damage or loss. The most fundamental ideas hidden in “paying the penalty” are “each should respect others’ properties” and “it guarantees others’ private property.” Such an indigenous practice can be powerful evidence that the concept of “respect to individual property” is not a modern concept rooted in a human rights-based approach but is also embedded in indigenous ecological knowledge that rests on the principle of saving to save where the available resources are limited in sustaining livelihood.

There is a long debate among scholars on whether human-nature relationships are either rational/instrumental or constructed/interpretative. These debates range from the spectrum of materialist to idealist/interpretative perspectives (Chhetri 2008). The first emphasizes explaining the causes of differences and similarities among societies and cultures (Harris 1979), and the second is in search of meaning rather than in search of law, as are experimental sciences (Geertz 1973). The distinct methodological perspectives produce a debate in anthropology between objectivism and subjectivism. However, the study’s findings provide evidence against the nature-culture dualistic approach. It claims that either end of one perspective could fully account for humanity’s complex relationships with the natural world, which is untenable (Strauss and Orlove 2004). If we try to see the human-nature relationship through the ideas of the dualism approach that indeed hides true ecological understanding (Campbell 2013, Descola 2013, Yü and de Maaker 2021, Poudel et al. 2022). The different practices and methods used by the people of the Nhāson Valley to care for standing crops also suggest that separating nature and culture is irrelevant. They see the threats upon crops not only from animals and human beings but also from bad spirits or the willingness of deities. Therefore, it demands plural worldviews that bring instrumental and non-instrumental or rationalist and non-rationalist frameworks together (Castree et al. 2014, Chakraborty et al. 2021), and also that an indigenous relational ontology, social personhood and agency, extend beyond humans (Paul et al. 2021).

Indigenous values of environmental care are, of course, rooted in the concepts of responsibility, respect, and reciprocity that manage their relationship with the environment rather than govern or manage the environment (Menzies et al. 2024). Such rational value reflects care, social bonding, place attachment, and spiritual meanings between humans and nature (Mattijssen et al. 2020). In the valley, the rationality of caring for standing crops is highly associated with food or food scarcity. If the village shifts from a self-producing village to a consumer village, either by agricultural products being supplemented by the market or through people making their living from non-agricultural activities, the existing crop caring system may disappear. Then, the exiting practices of caring for standing crops may not be functional.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings reveal that caring for standing crops is not just rooted in technical rationality imposed by external agencies; it is cultivated in the morality or ethics of saving to save. It is governed by the concepts of responsibility, respect, and reciprocity. It provides intuitive ecological knowledge to the people about the fragile ecosystem where they live and respect for others’ property. In the age of modernity, caring for standing crops is often being reduced to rationality and universality by erasing the cultural and contextual matters or particularity of place or community. When context-specific, place-specific, and cultural-specific caring for resources is given away by imposing a universal knowledge system institutionalized by the hegemony of ontology of modern science (local people as primitive people and their knowledge and practice as traditional or savage) that always oppresses and paralyzes the alternative perspective or indigenous ontology, which is embedded in social institutions and cultural contexts. The ignorance of this aspect ultimately fails to account for another dimension of society.

This research raised the question of how we can bridge local knowledge and scientific knowledge. My research suggests rethinking the rationality of the techno-managerial paradigm by recognizing diverse systems such as technical, social, and cultural practices practiced by farmers to protect crops that bring science and society together and recognizes their dependency. This is only possible through the fusion of subjectivity and objectivity, which is still highly relevant to explaining the human-nature relationship in the Himalayan region. This intellectual fusion creates a lively and more robust ecological framework for studying social-ecological linkage. This can be an important departure from the common generalization of the Himalayan environment as an objective reality.

Another question was raised: why is ritual still relevant to studying human-nature relationships? My finding states that the local animistic practices, including the ritual performed by the local people for caring for standing crops, increase people’s connectedness with and knowledge about the environment, including cultural context and understanding of risks. Such understanding provides an alternative view of the human-nature relationship, especially caring for nature. As Yü and de Maaker (2021) stated, people’s attitudes and everyday actions also remind us that the Himalaya is not only the dwelling of humans and animals but also of divine beings who need to be recognized and acknowledged. We should rethink the reductionist lens of normative science research that has been overwhelmingly presenting the human-nature relationships in the Himalaya in a materialist way.

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