Ian Miller - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Ian Miller
University of Toronto

Let me set the scene: it is 2015, I am finishing up my Phd, and putting together a panel for AAS. You all know how important this panel is - it is the chance to introduce yourself to the field. My first two or three choices for discussant, from my immediate field of Chinese environmental history, have all declined. I run into an old friend for coffee, and he suggests a scholar I’ve never heard of before, someone working on South Asian anthropology, but critically, on forests. So I look him up - he’s a big deal, a senior scholar at Yale. I get his book. Wow. It’s a framework for thinking about state power and forest administration that is totally foreign to my field, and totally transformative to my thinking. I take a chance and write to this scholar, and to my surprise, he is interested in my panel. I meet him for the first time at AAS, and he is warm, efficient, and insightful. I will not hold you in suspense: the scholar I am talking about is Shivi.

I am going to share one more anecdote, and then I will talk about the significance. I, like many of you, ended up at Agrarian Studies, where I found this type of efficient insight to be a weekly experience, every Friday just before lunch. The willingness to cross fields and disciplines - to invest equally in New England oyster farming, and Chinese statecraft, and linguistic reconstructions of African historical ecology - this was utterly refreshing after the requisite PhD experience of becoming a world-expert in some narrow niche. Building on my time at Ag Studies, I was putting together a conference on Asian forest history with some of the folks who were at that first AAS panel, and indeed, several of whom also passed through Ag Studies. So of course I sought Shivi’s council. And as always, he was casually adept at all the little academic and administrative details. But the little Shivi touches were the key. “There’s this chap you might want to meet,” he said, “his name is Brad Davis” And of course, this chap, who is sitting in this room, soon became a key co-organizer, and later co-editor, and remains my good friend and ongoing collaborator.

There are many faces to Shivi’s impact. There is the sharp intellect and field-defining research. There is the casual wizardry that makes bureaucracy vanish. But I think the side of Shivi that I have most appreciated is the point guard role. Shivi is so good at passing the ball. Indeed - if you will let me mix sports metaphors - he is an all-time master of the hockey assist - making a connection that makes a connection. How many books, papers, collaborations, friendships started with a yes to a cold-call email, or a casual remark that “there’s this chap you might want to meet?”

For this, and for so many things, I would like to thank you Shivi, and congratulate you on a wonderful career.