Sharing Mountains: Ethical Change in Ik Land
Name of applicant
Lotte Meinert
Institution
Aarhus University
Amount
DKK 950,352
Year
2020
Type of grant
Monograph Fellowships
What?
Sharing Mountains is a book on sharing, morality and land based on long-term research in the Ik Mountains in Uganda. It contributes to international debates and urgent rethinking on sustainability and global commons. The book demonstrates and develops a view of morality from the ground up, and from challenges of sharing. The project puts the indigenous Ik back on the world map with a new global reputation and relevance.
Why?
Sharing Mountains will be the first monograph published about the Ik since Colin Turnbull's world- famous, notorious book The Mountain People, which pitched the Ik as amoral and created intense debate, but left the Ik largely ignored. Fifty years later, Sharing Mountains, will shift the perspective and not only propose a different view of the Ik, but also address urgent matters of sharing commons and land in an era, where people on the fringe of global interest are increasingly forgotten.
How?
I will follow up on research and write Sharing Mountains with focused attention. Starting September 2021, I will spend 12 months writing up the material I have already gathered during fieldwork, doing a small archival study of Turnbull's Ik material, and updating on relevant discussions. I plan one field trip to Ik County to fact-check and confirm consent from interlocutors for quotes and photographs in accordance with GDPR. I plan to visit the Avery Archives in USA and present findings at the AAA conference in 2021. I will submit the manuscript to Chicago University Press as part of their Anthropology and African Studies Series.