CONTESTED AFFLUENCE: CULTURAL POLITICS OF PASHMINA WEALTH AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION IN LADAKH Alka Sabharwal ABSTRACT Purpose À This chapter attempts to critically examine the wildlife con- servation discourse that argues for curtailing the livestock grazing inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, situated on the India’s international borders with China in southeast Ladakh. The conventional conservation discourse points at the (supposed) greed of the Changpa pastoralists in accumulating an increasing number of pashmina goats as a primary environmental cause of wildlife loss in Changthang; however, there is a critical lack of insight into the political and historical mechanisms that lie within the dynamic interaction between resource access and socio- economic inequalities, critical for understanding Changpa pastoral- ism today. The Economics of Ecology, Exchange, and Adaptation: Anthropological Explorations Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 36, 77À113 Copyright r 2016 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0190-1281/doi:10.1108/S0190-128120160000036004 77