Social anthropology as a discipline has, more recently, helped us understand these ‘ecotones’ of sorts. Specific but little known ‘points of contact’ are fascinating as they have necessarily germinated novel cultural practices. In the context of Bengal, for example, how do different communities negotiate shared space when notions of about nonhuman animals and human bodies differ? So certain communities, usually lesser known as on the margins, as well as subaltern, help us understand new forms of belonging, bonding, and citizenship to specific places. Literary and political movements necessarily cross paths and pollinate, following different routes and creating a diverse universe, in which a single and fixed origin can only be questioned. As ecotones are the ‘contact zones’ between cultures (Pratt 1991) in contexts such as migration, diaspora, refugee movements and other postcolonial displacements and environmental evacuations, ‘how do the languages, the cultural practices, the scientific knowledge, and environmental concerns meet and transform in these newly constructed ecotones?’-they ask. in an urge to explore the ‘complex chemistry’ of creolizing worlds (Cohen 1997). For the convenors of this conference, and I cite, ‘an “ecotone” may also indicate a place where two communities meet, at times creolizing or germinating into a new community.’ As they explain, this term, traditionally used in environmental studies and geography, has here been applied to postcolonial studies in disciplines such as literature, history, the arts, social and political sciences, ethnic studies, ecocriticism, etc. Ecotones are both of great environmental importance as well as being very fragile ecospheres. This could be, for example, an area of marshland between a river and the riverbank, a clearing within a forest or a much larger area’ (Thorpe 2014). An Ecotone describes an area that acts as a transition or boundary between two ecosystems.
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