Working for the Forest: The Ambivalent Intimacies of Human-Elephant Collaboration in South Indian Wildlife Conservation

This paper explores the collaboration of humans and elephants in South Indian wildlife conservation. Drawing on ethnography within the Indian forest department and among elephant handlers in Wayanad, Kerala, it highlights the largely invisible work relationship between indigenous forest labourers and captive elephants, and their essential contribution to wildlife management. Extending ethnographic attention beyond an exclusively human realm, I show that human and elephant relations have been co-constituted while working together for the forest department. Their working partnership, situated in the historical nature-cultures of logging, teak extraction, and conservation, has created ambivalent intimacies between humans and elephants, containing both mutual violence and affect. By highlighting the importance of work relationships, history, and questions of power for multi-species studies, this article argues that human-animal relations are not only shaped by individual intimacies, but also by danger, risk, and aggression, situated within a region's larger political ecology.