Outgrowth of an international conference entitled "Symposium on Human-Elephant Relations in South and Southeast Asia" held at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, May 7-8, 2013. (Acknowledgements).

"As formidable instruments of war, they have changed the destinies of empires. As marauding crop-raiders, the are despised. As an endangered species, they are cherished. Numerous and often contrasting are the ways in which elephants have been regarded by humans across millennia. Today, with reduced forest cover, human population expansion, and increasing industrialization, interaction between the two species is unavoidable and conflict is not mere happenstance. What, then, is the future of this relationship? In South Asia, human-elephant relationships resonate with cultural significance. From the importance of elephants in ancient texts to the role of mahouts over centuries, from discussions on de-extinction to accounts of intimate companionship, the essays in this book reveal the various dynamics of the relationship between two intelligent social mammals. Eschewing such binaries as human and animal or nature and culture, the essays present elephants as subjective agents who think, feel, and emote. Conflict, Negotiation, and Coexistence underscores the fact that we cannot understand elephant habitat and behaviour in isolation from the humans who help configure it. Significantly, nor can we understand human political, economic, and social life without the elephants that shape and share the world with them."--Dust cover.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 330-353) and index.

Introduction: Conflict, coexistence, and the challenge of rethinking human-elephant relations / Piers Locke -- Part One. Humans and Elephants through Time. 1. The human-elephant relationship through the ages : a brief macro-scale history / Raman Sukumar ; 2. Towards a deep history of mahouts / Thomas R. Trautmann ; 3. Science of elephants in Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra / Patrick Olivelle ; 4. Symbolism and power : elephants and gendered authority in the Mughal world / Jane Buckingham ; 5. Trans-species colonial fieldwork : elephants as instruments and participants in mid-nineteenth-century India / Julian Baker ; 6. The hall of extinct monsters : mammoths, elephants, and nature in the palaeo-future / Amy L. Fletcher -- Part Two. Living with Elephants. 7. Animals, persons, gods : negotiating ambivalent relationships with captive elephants in Chitwan, Nepal / Piers Locke ; 8. Conduct and collaboration in human-elephant working communities of northeast India / Nicolas Lainé ; 9. Cultural values and practical realities in Sri Lankan human-elephant relations / Niclas Klixbüll -- Part Three. Sharing Space with Elephants. 10. Conservation and the history of human-elephant relations in Sri Lanka / Charles Santiapillai and S. Wijeyamohan ; 11. Elephant-human dandi : how humans and elephants move through the fringes of forest and village / Paul G. Keil ; 12. Challenges of coexistence : human-elephant conflicts in Wayanad, Kerala, South India / Ursula Münster ; 13. Ethnic diversity and human-elephant conflict in the Nilgiris, South India / Tarsh Thekaekara and Thomas F. Thornton.

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