This thesis examines the varied and contradictory ideas about rural women and their needs that are produced and circulate within development discourses and projects. It pays particular attention to the multiple actors involved in the production of such ideas and the relations of power that determine which ideas gain authority. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh, India, it looks at women's participation in three different development projects: a women's savings and credit group, a broad-based development NGO, and the women's village organizations (mahila mandals ). These case studies demonstrate how development organizations engage with local gender meanings, often working to reinforce or even exploit inequalities, rather than challenge them. As women are targeted by such projects, they creatively receive, shape, and negotiate the ideas and representations that they encounter about themselves. These encounters limit, and sometimes foster, women's potential for new political identities and agency.

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Climate change is a growing problem for those living in the Himalayas, threatening water availability and livelihoods. This research seeks to explore the various factors contributing to water shortage and the factors leading to perceptions of water shortage in Himachal Pradesh, India. This thesis explores data collected from 50 interviews conducted in summer 2019 and seeks to understand why participants of these interviews indicated that they do not experience water shortage. The research highlights the importance of further research and needed action in terms of addressing and mitigating the impacts of climate change in the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh.

La sculpture d’Himachal Pradesh connaît entre le septième et le quatorzième siècle un grand développement, dû à un bouleversement des conditions religieuses et politiques en Inde du Nord. Des souverains locaux légitiment alors leur pouvoir sur les vallées qui constituent cet état montagneux du nord de l’Inde en utilisant, entre autres procédés, la construction de temples et la dédicace d’images. Ces dernières révèlent, par leur iconographie et par leur style, certaines des conditions historiques et politiques dans lesquelles elles ont été créées. Grâce à une observation des oeuvres, regroupées en quatre grands ensembles spatio-temporels, nous avons tenté, dans cette thèse, de mettre à jour les transferts d’influences artistiques à la fois entre l’Himachal et les régions voisines et en Himachal même. Cette observation nous a également permis de proposer des hypothèses sur l’histoire des dynasties locales et sur leurs pratiques religieuses. / Changes in the political and religious situation in Northern India at the beginning of the medieval period caused new developments in the sculpture of Himachal Pradesh between the 7th and the 14th centuries. By using, among other means, the construction of temples and the consecration of images, local kings seeked to legitimize their power. Thus, the sculptures, through their iconography and their style, reveal some of the historical and political conditions in which they were created. By means of a strict observation of those works, classified in four groups by their localisation and datation, we tried, in this thesis, to distinguish some of the processes of artistic influences, between Himachal and neighboring regions, as well as in Himachal itself. This careful examination allowed us then to speculate about the history of local dynasties and about their religious practices.

In the early 90’s the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh (HP) initiated Joint Forest Management (JFM) in order to share responsibilities for managing, protecting and making decisions about government owned forests with local users. The purpose of this study was to consider how the JFM approach is currently being practiced, particularly the role of women in decision-making and the learning outcomes for all participants as a result of their involvement. The research used a qualitative, case study approach involving two mountain communities, Solang and Khakhnal. Data were collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and transect walks. The study revealed that a number of factors, including ownership rights, sharing management responsibilities and underrepresentation of women within village forest committees, greatly influence collaboration among the forest-dependent communities, NGO’s and the forest department. Further, the data indicate that individual and social learning did occur through participation in JFM activities. / October 2016

The sustained interaction of local elites and British administrators in the West Himalayas over the decades that surrounded the early colonial encounter (c. 1790-1840) saw the emergence of a distinctly new understanding of communal identity among the leaders of the region. This eventful period saw the mountain ('Pahari') kingdoms transform from fragmented, autonomous polities on the fringes of the Indian subcontinent to subjects of indigenous (Nepali, Sikh) and, ultimately, foreign (British) empires, and dramatically altered the ways Pahari leaders chose to remember and represent themselves. Using a wide array of sources from different locales in the hills (e.g., oral epics, archival records and local histories), this thesis traces the Pahari elite's transition from a nebulous group of lineage-based leaders to a cohesive unitary milieu modelled after contemporary interpretations of Hindu kingship. This nascent ideal of kingship is shown to have fed into concurrent understandings of Rajput society in the West Himalayas and ultimately to have sustained the alliance between indigenous rulers and British administrators.