&ldquo;IIT Jodhpur is committed to impart quality education to facilitate the creation of qualified, competent and responsible human resources to meet the emerging technological challenges of the world. It is working towards creating an equitable learning platform that is positive, accessible and effective in the face of the modern societal and scientific advancements.

Flexibility in curriculum, in all its academic programs, encompassing elements of teaching, research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is the most unique feature of IIT Jodhpur. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, has identified IIT Jodhpur as a Technology &amp; Innovation Hub in the area of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The institute has also been nominated as the coordinator for the Jodhpur City and Knowledge Cluster by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India.

The sprawling 852-acre IIT Jodhpur campus is a majestic tribute to the deep-rooted diverse cultural heritage of the region. The campus is an architectural masterpiece, which is slated to become an international exemplar of sustainability with net-zero energy, and advanced water and waste management strategies.&rdquo;

IIT Jodhpur

This paper is based on my experience of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Indian Himalayas to study the illegal hashish trade in the region. The work required me to spend time with cannabis cultivators, dealers, drug tourists and law enforcement officials. My informants would regularly engage in the consumption of narcotic substances. A significant part of building close and durable relationships with informants was getting intoxicated with them. Dealer and cultivator groups were generally tightly knit, and an outsider was looked upon with mistrust. I found that consuming narcotics with informants would generally induce candid conversations, which meant a good amount of data coming my way. This paper analyses the social dynamics of such interactions and discusses the ethical ambiguity inherent in such a process of data collection. Although there have been a number of insightful ethnographic studies on narcotic substances, there have been surprisingly few studies addressing the ethnographer’s experience and potential risks involved. Through a mainly reflexive examination of my fieldwork, this paper is an account of how the ethnographic method frequently pushes the fieldworker to transgress ethical, psychological, professional, social and personal boundaries. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

School of Liberal Arts (SoLA)

Social Epistemology

Going to Work ‘High’: Negotiating Boundaries while Doing Ethnography of Drugs

Relationships are the elementary forms of social life that animate structures and processes between and among individuals, groups and institutions, and are in turn transformed by them. Relationships between forest dependent peoples (FP) and state forest management institutions (FD) are central to forestry practice yet seldom the focus of research studies. Whereas decentralization and participatory institutions have received much attention in research and practice, relationships that underpin them have remained largely unaddressed. This paper utilizes an adaptation of the systematic review method to synthesize findings on the nature of this relationship in the Global South. We reviewed 135 articles published between 1997 and 2017, selected following a systematic article search and selection protocol on JSTOR and Google Scholar. History, as expected, is a living referent in shaping contemporary relations, accounting for tremendous diversity across the Global South. We identified key concepts from literature across this diversity, and synthesized them using five overlapping thematic codes: (a) asymmetries of power; (b) access to and control over productive resources; (c) knowledge, perceptions and attitudes; (d) stratification and heterogeneity; and (e) external influences. Numerical analysis of article meta-data revealed that research is attentive to the FP-FD relationship primarily in the context of decentralization or community participatory policies and projects. Well-designed policies, projects, institutions and effective individuals create opportunities for partial, temporary and symbolic transformation in the FP-FD relationship. However, structural power asymmetry between FD and FP, historically established, and reproduced through social inequalities and hierarchies, sustains. The content of social relationships overflow sector specific transformations. Reflecting on the scope of systematic review as method in synthesis of qualitative research, we found that although loss of context specificity is a disadvantage, systematic review can be productively adapted to explore neglected issues as we do in our study with relationships, through analysis of empirical data in studies with other objectives. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

World University root node

Fulltext

Environmental Research Letters

Characterising the relationship between forest dependent peoples and state forest management institutions in the Global South

An indigenous crop, cannabis and its parts have traditionally been used in some regions of the Indian Himalayas for food, clothing, and enjoyment in the form of a socially consumed intoxicant. Cannabis has become engendered in social transformations and has been historically subsumed within the socio-cultural life of the region, where it has been a "humble" object (Miller 2009) of great utility, but hardly influential. However, in the last couple of decades, cannabis has been important in transforming the local economy, challenging the socio-cultural order, and influencing individual life trajectories in parts of the Indian Himalayas. This paper illustrates how cannabis becomes a "transgressive" object, one that is possessed of a force that shapes human life (for better and worse), and challenges and transforms social institutions and practices in the region. The sociocultural, historical, and material aspects of cannabis play significant roles in such a transformation. While illustrating how the history of colonization and global circulation of cannabis is inscribed with contradictory meanings, the paper suggests that much (although not all) of cannabis's present power in the Indian Himalayas can be attributed to historical and present interpretations in the global West. The paper examines the engagement between local community and cannabis, and explores how this engagement ushers in social change in the Indian Himalayas. © 2018 Society of Ethnobiology. All rights reserved.