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Harvesting Identities: Youth, Work, and Gender in the Indian Himalayas

An examination of young people's lichen collection in the Indian Himalayas shows how youth in the global South can imbue their work with meaning, manage their work practices, and sometimes transgress established norms in specific work settings. Building on fifteen months' intensive field research in the high Himalayas, this article describes how young men and women have used the opportunity provided by lichen collection to contest or reaffirm gendered subjectivities and acquire a sense of dignity, even in the face of extraordinary hardship. As a counterpoint to Western accounts of children's geographies, this research illustrates how gender and caste inequalities shape children's lives, highlighting the role of local space in mediating children's agency, and stressing the importance of examining young people's subjectivities. The nature of development in a location marginalized by global and regional circuits of capital is deeply contradictory.