Thesis Title: Living on the Road, Waiting for the Road: The Political Ecology of Road Construction in Ladakh.

Jonathan’s study examines how people-environment relations both shape and are transformed by the construction of roads. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in villages in both on-road and off-road locations as well as with working migrants on construction sites in Ladakh, India. Through a political ecology framework he attempts to capture the dynamic relations between the environment and socially differentiated groups and individuals who use and transform this environment.

His research is showing that road construction is not a technical or socially and politically neutral intervention but an eminently political process, determined by bargaining between different groups and individuals and resulting in unevenly distributed gains and losses.