Translating the Snow Leopard into a Fictitious Commodity

Abstract

Snow leopard tourism has emerged as a niche in Ladakh’s broader tourism sector. This paper traces the translation of snow leopards into a fictitious commodity in the context of wildlife tourism in Ladakh. Snow leopards are not a commodity in a Marxist sense because they are not a product of human labor. Instead, I draw from Karl Polyani’s notion of “fictitious commodities” to conceptualize the peculiar nature of the commodified snow leopards. To trace the process of becoming a fictitious commodity, I take anthropologist Anna Tsing’s concept of translation, which she uses to examine shifts in the value of matsutake mushrooms from gift to commodity and vice versa. The idea of translation helps elucidate how the snow leopard comes to be treated as a tradable entity. However, before such translation is possible, the snow leopard must be made visible as a wild animal. This article suggests that popular books, such as Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard (1978), as well as academic/conservation research and wildlife films, played a key role in rendering the snow leopard visible. Once the animal is visible, advertisements and tour packages translate the snow leopard into a fictitious commodity. However, the emergence of a commodified snow leopard raises questions about responsibility, especially when one of the major threats to the species is the changing climate, a phenomenon to which the fossil fueldependent tourism industry is a major contributor.