36.2579, FYI: Indigeneity, Environmental Humanities and Endangered Languages: Perspectives from the Global South

Tue Sep 2 10:05:01 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2579. Tue Sep 02 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2579, FYI: Indigeneity, Environmental Humanities and Endangered Languages: Perspectives from the Global South

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Date: 29-Aug-2025
From: Samir Karmakar [samir.karmakar at jadavpuruniversity.in]
Subject: Indigeneity, Environmental Humanities and Endangered Languages: Perspectives from the Global South

As a part of the Peter Lang book series Environmental Humanities and
Indigeneity, contributions are invited for an edited volume that will
critically engage with the intersections of indigeneity, environmental
humanities, and endangered languages from the Global South
perspectives, with a particular emphasis on decolonial approaches.
Concept note:
Colonial histories did not merely redraw political borders; they
redefined ecological landscapes and cultural worlds, often
dispossessing indigenous peoples of their lands and marginalizing
their languages. Colonial and postcolonial constructions of
“environment” have tended to prioritize extractive, profit-driven
models, eroding both biodiversity and linguistic diversity. Endangered
indigenous languages often contain nuanced ecological knowledge -
sustainable practices, environmental ethics, and place-based
vocabularies - that are increasingly sidelined by dominant linguistic
regimes tied to consumerist, globalized economies.
In India, the Gond language - spoken by one of the largest Adivasi
communities - encodes rich forest-related vocabulary and oral
traditions tied to sustainable harvesting, seasonal cycles, and
wildlife conservation. Yet decades of displacement due to mining,
large dam projects, and state-driven development have disrupted these
linguistic ecologies. The replacement of Gond with regional dominant
languages in education and administration has further eroded this
knowledge system, illustrating how environmental exploitation and
linguistic marginalization are deeply intertwined. In the Amazon
basin, the Kichwa a.k.a. Quechua language in Ecuador preserves an
intricate lexicon for rainforest biodiversity, including medicinal
plants, water sources, and animal behaviors. However, oil drilling and
deforestation in indigenous territories have degraded these
environments, prompting language shift toward Spanish and weakening
intergenerational transmission of ecological knowledge. Similarly, in
Papua New Guinea, home to over 800 languages, the Mekeo language
contains detailed terminologies for traditional irrigation systems and
seasonal crop cycles. The promotion of cash-crop monocultures under
postcolonial development agendas has displaced indigenous agricultural
systems and the linguistic contexts that sustain them.
These cases underscore a shared reality across the Global South: the
futures of Indigenous languages and environments are deeply
intertwined, and meaningful engagement with one necessitates
addressing the other through a decolonial perspective. Crucially, any
discussion of indigeneity must interrogate how it is constructed as a
category within the environmental contexts of the Global South -
contexts still marked by colonial legacies, entrenched structural
inequalities, and enduring epistemic hierarchies that continue to
shape the political, economic, and cultural landscapes of countries
historically subjected to colonial domination.
The contributions are being looked for on the themes which may
include, but are not limited to:
Colonial and postcolonial constructions of the environment and their
effects on indigenous linguistic ecologies.
The effect of language loss in the erosion of indigenous environmental
knowledge.
Oral traditions, ecological ethics, and indigenous environmental
resilience.
Case studies of language revitalization interconnected with ecological
activism.
Decolonial methodologies in environmental humanities and linguistics
in the Global South.
Submission Guidelines:
Extended abstract: 1000-1500 words, including title, author(s),
affiliation(s), and 5 keywords.
Bio-note: 100–150 words per author.
Deadlines:
Abstract submission: 30/11/2025
Notification of acceptance: 31/01/2026
Full paper (5,000–5,500 words): 25/05/2026
Email submissions and queries to: samir.karmakar at jadavpuruniversity.in
Interdisciplinary contributions are welcomed from linguistics,
anthropology, environmental studies, history, indigenous studies, and
related fields.
For more details, please visit
https://jadavpuruniversity.in/ongoing-projects/indigeneity-environmental-humanities-and-endangered-languages-perspectives-from-the-global-south/

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     General Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Linguistic Theories
                     Sociolinguistics

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2579
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