- http://shneiderman.arts.ubc.ca/
Sara B Shneiderman
University of British Columbia, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Religion, Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, Border Studies, Tibetan Studies, Political Anthropology, and 17 moreSocial and Cultural Anthropology, South Asian Studies, Ritual, Himalayan culture, Development anthropology, Performativity, Resistance (Social), Indigeneity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Performance Studies, Migration, Authenticity, Transnationalism, Ethnography, Maurice Godelier, Ethnicity, and Anthropology of Religionedit
Darjeeling Reconsidered provocatively rethinks Darjeeling’s legendary status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds... more
Darjeeling Reconsidered provocatively rethinks Darjeeling’s legendary status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds fresh light on the region’s past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today. The historical analyses break with hackneyed colonial accounts to provide alternative readings of systems of governance, labour, and migration that shaped Darjeeling. The ethnographic chapters present cutting-edge accounts of dynamics that define life in 21st century Darjeeling: among them the realpolitik of subnationalism; Fair Trade tea; indigenous struggle; gendered inequality; ecological transformation; and resource scarcity. Through these eye-opening perspectives, Darjeeling Reconsidered figures Darjeeling as a vital site for South Asian and Postcolonial Studies-and calls for a timely re-examination of the legend and hard-realities of this oft-romanticized region and its people.
“Darjeeling Reconsidered is an essential and timely book on a place of special significance in Northeast India. The essays within question the longstanding colonial and tourist romance surrounding the ‘Queen of the Hills,’ and examine the political, social, environmental, and labour movements that shape its contemporary life. With this collection, Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman upend outdated myths in favour of rigorous new scholarship. The reader is left with a portrait of Darjeeling that is as complex and dynamic as it is intricate.”—Manjushree Thapa, Author and Translator of Indra Bahadur Rai’s There’s a Carnival Today
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/darjeeling-reconsidered-9780199483556
“Darjeeling Reconsidered is an essential and timely book on a place of special significance in Northeast India. The essays within question the longstanding colonial and tourist romance surrounding the ‘Queen of the Hills,’ and examine the political, social, environmental, and labour movements that shape its contemporary life. With this collection, Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman upend outdated myths in favour of rigorous new scholarship. The reader is left with a portrait of Darjeeling that is as complex and dynamic as it is intricate.”—Manjushree Thapa, Author and Translator of Indra Bahadur Rai’s There’s a Carnival Today
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/darjeeling-reconsidered-9780199483556
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"An entirely unique and stunning ethnography. Shneiderman finds herself assisting the Thangmi's drive to manifest their distinctiveness and seek recognition. She manages a high-wire performance herself: one full of compassion, acute... more
"An entirely unique and stunning ethnography. Shneiderman finds herself assisting the Thangmi's drive to manifest their distinctiveness and seek recognition. She manages a high-wire performance herself: one full of compassion, acute theoretical insight, exemplary balance, and respect for the sacredness of the quest—doing as much credit to ethnography as a craft as to the Thangmi as a people. Few have been as fortunate in their ethnographer as the Thangmi."—James C. Scott, Yale University
"Brilliant and original, Rituals of Ethnicity traces how identity, ethnicity, and indigeneity are constructed by members of a marginalized group within different state structures. Arguing for the importance of often self-conscious rituals for mobilizing and objectifying ethnicity, Shneiderman shows how anthropology too can be marshalled for this project, recasting ethnography as a variety of ritualized performance."—Kirin Narayan, The Australian National University
Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones of Nepal (Dolakha and Sindhupalchok districts), India (Darjeeling and Sikkim) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Shneiderman offers a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities today despite the increasing realities of mobile, hybrid lives. She shows that ethnicization may be understood as a process of ritualization, which brings people together around the shared sacred object of identity.
The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, Rituals of Ethnicity is framed by the Maoist-state civil conflict in Nepal and the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India. The histories of individual nation-states in this geopolitical hotspot—as well as the cross-border flows of people and ideas between them—reveal the far-reaching and mutually entangled discourses of democracy, communism, development, and indigeneity that have transformed the region over the past half century. Attentive to the competing claims of diverse members of the Thangmi community, from shamans to political activists, Shneiderman shows how Thangmi ethnic identity is produced collaboratively by individuals through ritual actions embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts. She builds upon the specificity of Thangmi experiences to tell a larger story about the complexities of ethnic consciousness: the challenges of belonging and citizenship under conditions of mobility, the desire to both lay claim to and remain apart from the civil society of multiple states, and the paradox of self-identification as a group with cultural traditions in need of both preservation and development. Through deep engagement with a diverse, cross-border community that yearns to be understood as a distinctive, coherent whole, Rituals of Ethnicity presents an argument for the continued value of locally situated ethnography in a multi-sited world.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15382.html
"Brilliant and original, Rituals of Ethnicity traces how identity, ethnicity, and indigeneity are constructed by members of a marginalized group within different state structures. Arguing for the importance of often self-conscious rituals for mobilizing and objectifying ethnicity, Shneiderman shows how anthropology too can be marshalled for this project, recasting ethnography as a variety of ritualized performance."—Kirin Narayan, The Australian National University
Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones of Nepal (Dolakha and Sindhupalchok districts), India (Darjeeling and Sikkim) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Shneiderman offers a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities today despite the increasing realities of mobile, hybrid lives. She shows that ethnicization may be understood as a process of ritualization, which brings people together around the shared sacred object of identity.
The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, Rituals of Ethnicity is framed by the Maoist-state civil conflict in Nepal and the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India. The histories of individual nation-states in this geopolitical hotspot—as well as the cross-border flows of people and ideas between them—reveal the far-reaching and mutually entangled discourses of democracy, communism, development, and indigeneity that have transformed the region over the past half century. Attentive to the competing claims of diverse members of the Thangmi community, from shamans to political activists, Shneiderman shows how Thangmi ethnic identity is produced collaboratively by individuals through ritual actions embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts. She builds upon the specificity of Thangmi experiences to tell a larger story about the complexities of ethnic consciousness: the challenges of belonging and citizenship under conditions of mobility, the desire to both lay claim to and remain apart from the civil society of multiple states, and the paradox of self-identification as a group with cultural traditions in need of both preservation and development. Through deep engagement with a diverse, cross-border community that yearns to be understood as a distinctive, coherent whole, Rituals of Ethnicity presents an argument for the continued value of locally situated ethnography in a multi-sited world.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15382.html
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Through ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of policy documents about private housing reconstruction in the wake of Nepal's devastating 2015 earthquakes, we show how the contemporary "house," "household," and "home" are key sites of... more
Through ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of policy documents about private housing reconstruction in the wake of Nepal's devastating 2015 earthquakes, we show how the contemporary "house," "household," and "home" are key sites of regulation for the state, as well as for the development and humanitarian organizations that work within it. Our discussion lays bare a more general set of questions about the relationships between these categories that remain unresolved in the anthropological literature, as well as in domains of policy practice that build on it. The experience of postearthquake reconstruction in Nepal has highlighted conceptual limitations in the existing legal definitions of ownership and residence and challenged people's sense of belonging at the affective level. This is in part due to conditions of high mobility that affect patterns of kinship and sociality and demand an understanding of infrastructure as process. We propose a tripartite analytical framework that recognizes the relational complexities between the concepts of "house," "household," and "home" and argue that careful attention to their definitions in both anthropological and policy contexts matters because those terminologies drive processes of change that may begin in moments of natural disaster but extend far beyond that temporal horizon to reconfigure lives. For example, a garment becomes a real garment only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real house.
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This piece explores ethnographically how new "subjects" of corruption are formulated through discursive and practical negotiations over the appropriate behaviour of those who would have previously been understood as subalterns. I explore... more
This piece explores ethnographically how new "subjects" of corruption are formulated through discursive and practical negotiations over the appropriate behaviour of those who would have previously been understood as subalterns. I explore these questions in the context of a reconstruction project in post-conflict, post-earthquake Nepal. Newly rendered as "community members" and "users," in the language of both governmental and non-governmental agencies, I suggest that residents of Nepal's rural areas navigate rapidly evolving state structures, domestic labour markets, and transnational relationships by practicing new forms of agency that can put them at odds with the expectations of the external actors who offer resources and regulate their use.
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Many studies have shown that economic and political freedom better predict overall satisfaction than income or material consumption. However, in the context of post-disaster reconstruction, whether freedom of choice in reconstruction is a... more
Many studies have shown that economic and political freedom better predict overall satisfaction than income or material consumption. However, in the context of post-disaster reconstruction, whether freedom of choice in reconstruction is a better predictor of satisfaction with newly reconstructed houses than the extent of material reconstruction per se is much less clear. In this paper, employing ordinal logistic regression analysis to data collected in the aftermath of Nepal's 7.8 Mw 2015 earthquake, we find that freedom of choice in the reconstruction process predicts households' post-disaster satisfaction with newly reconstructed houses better than the extent of physical reconstruction per se. Interestingly, many seemingly important predictors such as income, education, location, occupation, household size and age of respondents that we investigated are not statistically significant. Apart from freedom of choice, only gender and ethnicity are significant in explaining satisfaction with newly reconstructed houses. We also find a negative correlation between satisfaction level and inequality in such levels among ethnic groups; the reverse is true in the case of gender. These findings underscore the importance of freedom, and ethnic or gender-specific policies, in promoting well-being in post-disaster recovery.
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This Afterword draws the essays in this special collection together by highlighting how the 'Buddhist Homeland' imaginary can be mobilized to advance the agendas of marginalized communities in non-Buddhist state and diasporic spaces.... more
This Afterword draws the essays in this special collection together by highlighting how the 'Buddhist Homeland' imaginary can be mobilized to advance the agendas of marginalized communities in non-Buddhist state and diasporic spaces. Buddhist practices and identities may be seen as acceptable forms of counter-hegemonic practice, which are not perceived to challenge sovereignty itself in the way that other forms of mobilization from below may. This is in part due to the often deterritorialized nature of Buddhist networks themselves, making it possible to separate claims of belonging to Buddhist places from political claims to sovereignty over specific territorial spaces.
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Ethnicity is a concept that marks social belonging as much as it does difference, and that lies at the heart of political debates as well as debates across academic disciplines today. Rooted in the ancient Greek ethnos, the term is... more
Ethnicity is a concept that marks social belonging as much as it does difference, and that lies at the heart of political debates as well as debates across academic disciplines today. Rooted in the ancient Greek ethnos, the term is popularly understood as ‘people’ or ‘nation’. It entered public discourse in the US and Europe as early as the 1940s, but only gained significant traction by the 1960s. Emerging as an important frame for anthropological research during the same time period, ethnicity was initially seen as a terminological shift away from loaded, biologically-based concepts such as ‘tribe’ and ‘race’. This made it a potentially more accurate and productive lens through which to understand sociocultural diversity. Yet ‘ethnicity’ also retained associations with primordial forms of group identification, therefore gaining a prominent place within exclusivist nationalist discourses as well as mobilisations of multiculturalism around the world.
This entry shows how understandings of ethnicity have changed over time, and that both structural and affective features continue to define what ethnicity may be in any given context. It highlights the ways in which groups use and embody their ethnicity as a category of their identity, and that ethnicity overlaps with related understandings of identity such as ‘Indigeneity’, ‘nationality’, and ‘tribe’. Recent scholarship has criticised associations between being ‘ethnic’ and being a ‘minority’ to explore the political consequences of ethnic labels, which can serve as tools of both social change and discrimination. The anthropological study of ethnicity shows that ethnic labels are constructed, used, and understood differently by communities, political actors (both state and non-state), and scholars. It also shows that shifting claims over ethnic categories connect to broader debates surrounding authenticity, recognition, and social belonging. Lastly, this entry illustrates that anthropological scholarship has evolved alongside such political claims, and needs to account for their dynamic and often paradoxical outcomes.
This entry shows how understandings of ethnicity have changed over time, and that both structural and affective features continue to define what ethnicity may be in any given context. It highlights the ways in which groups use and embody their ethnicity as a category of their identity, and that ethnicity overlaps with related understandings of identity such as ‘Indigeneity’, ‘nationality’, and ‘tribe’. Recent scholarship has criticised associations between being ‘ethnic’ and being a ‘minority’ to explore the political consequences of ethnic labels, which can serve as tools of both social change and discrimination. The anthropological study of ethnicity shows that ethnic labels are constructed, used, and understood differently by communities, political actors (both state and non-state), and scholars. It also shows that shifting claims over ethnic categories connect to broader debates surrounding authenticity, recognition, and social belonging. Lastly, this entry illustrates that anthropological scholarship has evolved alongside such political claims, and needs to account for their dynamic and often paradoxical outcomes.
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As I drafted this afterword in late summer 2020, two news stories that demonstrated the national and global significance of the relationship between 'reconciliation' and 'irreconciliation' unfolded in parallel here in Canada. One emerged... more
As I drafted this afterword in late summer 2020, two news stories that demonstrated the national and global significance of the relationship between 'reconciliation' and 'irreconciliation' unfolded in parallel here in Canada. One emerged locally at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, where I live and teach on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Wa-Tuth peoples; the other in Montreal and on the federal level. On 14 September 2020, UBC released its Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP) and began planning for its implementation, making the institution 'the first university in North America to commit to implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' as part of 'UBC Vancouver's response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action'. 1 Developed through a long-term consultation process with Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty, students, staff, and community members, the document highlights the need to put 'truth before reconciliation' , and once on the pathway to the latter, to keep the focus on 'meaningful reconciliation' through a plan to 'transform intent into action' as an ongoing process rather than a singular event. At that time, I was still struggling to understand Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's excoriation of anti-racism protesters in Montreal who had toppled a statue of Canada's first Prime Minister just a few weeks earlier. John Macdonald is widely understood as a key architect of the Indian residential school system in Canada, among other strategies designed to effect the genocide of Indigenous peoples. As CBC reported, 'The Macdonald statue was toppled and decapitated during a protest calling on political leaders to de-fund police services-part of a wave of protests across the continent against excessive violence perpetrated by law enforcement against Black and Indigenous people'. Yet Trudeau himself invoked the logic of law and order to condemn these actions, saying, 'We are a country of laws and we are a country that needs to respect those laws,
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We came together to write a paper on the devaluation of field researcher labor as an entry point into the broader domain of research ethics to unpack what collaboration may mean in settings of incommensurable inequality. These motivations... more
We came together to write a paper on the devaluation of field researcher labor as an entry point into the broader domain of research ethics to unpack what collaboration may mean in settings of incommensurable inequality. These motivations were grounded in the materialities of our involvement within an international research project focused on post-earthquake reconstruction processes in Nepal since 2015. However, since we started writing this piece, some of us felt that the paper did not adequately reflect their experiences, others felt it put them in the hot seat too quickly, and some thought that it mimicked the faulty modes of collaboration we wanted to unsettle in the first place. Realizing the power dynamics within our own writing collective, we stepped away from a centralized narrative to make room for our diverse, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory experiences. The paper is a bricolage of reflections that focus on issues such as the division of labor, coauthorship, and community engagement. We use these reflections as a way to think critically about the current juncture of transnational, collaborative research and propose a series of open-ended reflections that prompt the problematization of the inequities, tensions, and emotional labor inherent in collaborative work.
This paper develops a dialogue between recent scholarship on Asian borderlands, infrastructure, and Sino-Indian geopolitical competition. The idea of “infrastructural effects” helps articulate how the ideational and material terrain on... more
This paper develops a dialogue between recent scholarship on Asian borderlands, infrastructure, and Sino-Indian geopolitical competition. The idea of “infrastructural effects” helps articulate how the ideational and material terrain on which competition between India and China occurs can be understood as an uneven Himalayan borderland through which the two states are both separated and connected. Drawing upon the polyvalent meanings embodied in the concepts of redundancy, resilience, and repair, we use these terms as organizing tropes through which to develop our analysis of infrastructure's position at the intersection of the material and the social. With an empirical focus on Northeast India and Nepal, we highlight how the varied effects of temporality, materiality, and spatiality shape the discourses and practices of infrastructure in borderland spaces.
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Co-authored with Philippe Le Billon, Manoj Suji, Jeevan Baniya, Bina Limbu, Dinesh Paudel, Katharine Rankin, Nabin Rawal The political economy literature on post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives... more
Co-authored with Philippe Le Billon, Manoj Suji, Jeevan Baniya, Bina Limbu, Dinesh Paudel, Katharine Rankin, Nabin Rawal
The political economy literature on post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives denouncing the predatory character of neoliberal rebuilding, and ‘building back better’ policies supporting market driven reconstruction. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced account, developing the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ through a case study of household-level changes experienced through processes of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal. The concept of disaster financialization describes not only the integration of disaster-affected households into the cash-based
logic of reconstruction instituted by donors and government authorities, but also the financialization of their lives, social relations and subjectivities. It is a transitive process involving a shift into financialized mechanisms of disaster prevention, adaptation and recovery. Analysing contrasting experiences across three earthquake-affected districts in Nepal, this study proposes disaster financialization as an integrative term through which to understand the simultaneous acceleration of monetization, the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to ‘build back better’, and the flurry of financial
transactions associated with reconstruction processes. While some aspects of disaster financialization have had negative social impacts, such as debt related anxieties and a breakdown of voluntary labour exchanges hurting the most vulnerable, the process has taken on variegated forms, with equally variegated effects, reflecting household characteristics and interactions with financial institutions.
The political economy literature on post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives denouncing the predatory character of neoliberal rebuilding, and ‘building back better’ policies supporting market driven reconstruction. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced account, developing the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ through a case study of household-level changes experienced through processes of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal. The concept of disaster financialization describes not only the integration of disaster-affected households into the cash-based
logic of reconstruction instituted by donors and government authorities, but also the financialization of their lives, social relations and subjectivities. It is a transitive process involving a shift into financialized mechanisms of disaster prevention, adaptation and recovery. Analysing contrasting experiences across three earthquake-affected districts in Nepal, this study proposes disaster financialization as an integrative term through which to understand the simultaneous acceleration of monetization, the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to ‘build back better’, and the flurry of financial
transactions associated with reconstruction processes. While some aspects of disaster financialization have had negative social impacts, such as debt related anxieties and a breakdown of voluntary labour exchanges hurting the most vulnerable, the process has taken on variegated forms, with equally variegated effects, reflecting household characteristics and interactions with financial institutions.
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Diaspora communities often play an important role in responding to disasters in their home countries. From fundraising, to providing direct relief, to providing advisory and translation services to humanitarian organizations, to speaking... more
Diaspora communities often play an important role in responding to disasters in their home countries. From fundraising, to providing direct relief, to providing advisory and translation services to humanitarian organizations, to speaking with the media, moments of crisis provide diverse opportunities for community engagement. In so doing, such moments of rupture may themselves work to forge diasporic identities. We argue that this was indeed the case for the Nepali-Canadian community in British Columbia. The experience of responding to the 2015 earthquakes enabled consolidation of an emergent South Asian identity in Canada, as it brought Nepali-Canadians into new relationships with each other, their home country, and other South Asian communities. Written collaboratively by a political scientist, an anthropologist and an economist (two of whom are Nepali-Canadians, with the third being an American anthropologist of Nepal who is now a permanent resident of Canada), this paper draws upon multiple disciplinary approaches to investigate disaster response within the Nepali-Canadian community in British Columbia. In so doing, it provides the first ever scholarly introduction to the Nepali community of BC.
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This review article provides a reading guide to scholarly literature published in English about Nepal's political transformation since 2006, when Nepal's decade-long civil conflict between Maoist and state forces formally ended. The... more
This review article provides a reading guide to scholarly literature published in English about Nepal's political transformation since 2006, when Nepal's decade-long civil conflict between Maoist and state forces formally ended. The article is structured around four major themes: (1) the Maoist insurgency or ‘People's War’; (2) state formation and transformation; (3) identity politics; and (4) territorial and ecological consciousness. We also address the dynamics of migration and mobility in relation to all of these themes. Ultimately, we consider the Maoist movement as one element in a much broader process of transformation, which with the benefit of hindsight we can situate in relation to several other contemporaneous trajectories, including: democratization, identity-based mobilization, constitutional nationalism, international intervention, territorial restructuring, migration and the remittance economy, and the emergence of ecological and other new forms of consciousness. By looking across the disciplines at scholarship published on all of these themes, we aim to connect the dots between long-standing disciplinary traditions of scholarship on Nepal and more recent approaches to understanding the country's transformation.
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Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies
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This article considers how ethnographic representations of ‘‘the village’’ have created links between otherwise disparate ‘‘regional ethnography traditions’’ over time. ‘‘The village’’ has served as a multivalent sign that at once works... more
This article considers how ethnographic representations of ‘‘the village’’ have created links between otherwise disparate ‘‘regional ethnography traditions’’ over time. ‘‘The village’’ has served as a multivalent sign that at once works to integrate specific locales into broader scholarly narratives, and to index moments of disjuncture in the production of regionality. I make this argument with specific reference to the relationship between ‘‘Himalayan’’ and ‘‘South Asian’’ studies, as mediated by the village as both geographical and social sign. I draw upon ethnographic material from three different Himalayan contexts to illustrate how people think of the village as a set of social relations, within which they orient themselves subjectively regardless of their physical location. Such orientations can be either positive or negative, demonstrating that the village serves not only as a site of nostalgia for those who have left it, but rather as an organizing principle that may possess a range of emotional and pragmatic valences. Ultimately, I argue that today’s villages remain key sites for the production of social meaning, requiring deep anthropological engagement if we wish to understand how contemporary mobile lives themselves mediate between the universal and the particular.
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ABSTRACT: India and federalising Nepal represent distinct types of federal polity: their origins lie not in the unification of previously autonomous states, but in the devolution of power by a previously centralised state. The... more
ABSTRACT: India and federalising Nepal represent distinct types of federal polity: their origins
lie not in the unification of previously autonomous states, but in the devolution of power by a
previously centralised state. The boundaries of their constituent sub-units are therefore open to
debate, and settling their contours is central to the project of state-building. Written by a political
scientist and an anthropologist, this article presents a comparative exploration of the reciprocal
relationship between state structuring and ethnicity in India and Nepal, with a focus on the
effects of territorial versus non-territorial forms of recognition. It pushes against recent
tendencies within South Asian Studies to see ethnic identity as called into being solely by state
practices or ‘governmentality’ on one hand, or as a newly commoditised form of belonging
produced through neoliberal reforms on the other. Instead it argues that ethnicity must be
understood as a multivalent concept that is at once embedded in specific histories of state and
sub-state formation, and generative of them. Comparative in scope yet driven by qualitative data
collected over years of engagement across the region, the article charts a middle way between
detailed ethnographic studies and large-scale comparative endeavors.""
lie not in the unification of previously autonomous states, but in the devolution of power by a
previously centralised state. The boundaries of their constituent sub-units are therefore open to
debate, and settling their contours is central to the project of state-building. Written by a political
scientist and an anthropologist, this article presents a comparative exploration of the reciprocal
relationship between state structuring and ethnicity in India and Nepal, with a focus on the
effects of territorial versus non-territorial forms of recognition. It pushes against recent
tendencies within South Asian Studies to see ethnic identity as called into being solely by state
practices or ‘governmentality’ on one hand, or as a newly commoditised form of belonging
produced through neoliberal reforms on the other. Instead it argues that ethnicity must be
understood as a multivalent concept that is at once embedded in specific histories of state and
sub-state formation, and generative of them. Comparative in scope yet driven by qualitative data
collected over years of engagement across the region, the article charts a middle way between
detailed ethnographic studies and large-scale comparative endeavors.""
Research Interests:
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across the Himalayan borders of Nepal and India, I revisit disciplinary debates about ethnicity. I focus on the expressive production of ethnic consciousness among members of the Thangmi (Thami) community... more
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across the Himalayan borders of Nepal and India, I revisit disciplinary debates about ethnicity. I focus on the expressive production of ethnic consciousness among members of the Thangmi (Thami) community in a context of high cross-border mobility. I argue that ethnicity is the result not only of the prerogatives of state control or market forces but also of a ritual process through which identity itself is produced as a sacred object that binds together diverse members of the collectivity. Thangmi participation in a range of ritualized actions demonstrates how mobility across national borders yields a high level of self-consciousness about the efficacy of each form of action as well as of the frames within which action unfolds. Ethnicity may be understood simultaneously as a historically contingent process and a wellspring of affectively real cultural content, enabling us to make better sense—in both scholarly and political terms—of emergent ethnic claims in South Asia and beyond.
For over half a century, a border zone mandated by bilateral treaty has existed along the full length of the international border between Nepal and China's Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Since 2002, people classified as “border... more
For over half a century, a border zone mandated by bilateral treaty has existed along the full length of the international border between Nepal and China's Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Since 2002, people classified as “border inhabitants” who live within 30 km of the border on both sides have been issued “border citizen cards” which allow them to cross the border without a passport or a visa, and travel up to 30 km on the other side. This article explores historical and contemporary experiences of life in the Nepal–TAR border zone for such border citizens. Their state-sanctioned cross-border mobility complicates existing work on Tibetan refugee citizenship, and expands previous models for understanding ethno-political identities and sovereignty in the Himalayan region. The legally recognized category of border citizenship between Nepal and China's TAR provides a compelling example of how states may create alternative categories of citizenship in response to practices from below, while further shaping such practices through regimes of differentiated citizenship. I argue that this form of border citizenship emerges out of non-postcolonial trajectories of state formation in the Himalayan region, which offer important contrasts with other parts of South Asia.
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This is the introduction to a special section of Focaal that includes seven articles on the anthropology of affirmative action in South Asia. The section promotes the sustained, critical ethnographic analysis of affirmative action... more
This is the introduction to a special section of Focaal that includes seven articles on the anthropology of affirmative action in South Asia. The section promotes the sustained, critical ethnographic analysis of affirmative action measures adopted to combat historical inequalities around the world. Turning our attention to the social field of affirmative action opens up new fronts in the anthropological effort to understand the state by carefully engaging the relationship between the formation and effects of policies for differentiated citizenship. We explore this relationship in the historical and contemporary context of South Asia, notably India and Nepal. We argue that affirmative action policies always transform society, but not always as expected. The relationship between political and socioeconomic inequality can be contradictory. Socioeconomic inequalities may persist or be refigured in new terms, as policies of affirmative action and their experiential effects are intimately linked to broader processes of economic liberalization and political transformation.
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This article examines the complex relationships between marginalized communities, the state, and nonstate actors such as development agencies and social scientists in crafting the classificatory regimes that undergird affirmative action... more
This article examines the complex relationships between marginalized communities, the state, and nonstate actors such as development agencies and social scientists in crafting the classificatory regimes that undergird affirmative action policies. Focusing on the current dynamics of “ethnic restructuring“ amid the broader political process of postconflict “state restructuring“ in Nepal, I suggest that international actors often unwittingly encourage the hardening of ethnic boundaries through development projects that target “marginalized“ populations defined in cultural terms. However, such interventions can also yield unexpected transformations in agentive ethnic consciousness. This ethnographic exploration of current classificatory processes in non-postcolonial Nepal provides an important counterpoint to material from the Indian context, where histories of colonial classification have debatably influenced contemporary categories-and their critique-to a significant extent.
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Nepal’s political transition to a democratic federal republic remains incomplete. A November 2011 agreement on post-conflict integration and rehabilitation offers reason for hope. Continued disagreements over the structure of the federal... more
Nepal’s political transition to a democratic federal republic remains incomplete. A November 2011 agreement on post-conflict integration and rehabilitation offers reason for hope. Continued disagreements over the structure of the federal state and its form of government have delayed the constitution-making process. Corruption, impunity, and weak infrastructure combine to erode Nepali confidence in effective governance. Bhutan’s democratic exercise continues to be carefully controlled by entrenched elites, but the country held its first-ever local elections successfully and economic growth stabilized.
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“‘Producing’ Thangmi Ritual Texts: Practice, Performance and Collaboration” in a special issue of Language Documentation and Description produced by the World Oral Literature Project. Mark Turin and Imogen Gunn, eds. 8: 159-174.
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“Revisiting Ethnography, Recognizing a Forgotten People: The Thangmi of Nepal and India” in Studies in Nepali History and Society. 11 (1): 97-181. Co-authored with Mark Turin.
Research Interests: Ethnography and Himalayas
Research Interests:
Every year on the tenth day of the autumn Dasain (Daśaĩ) festival, a diverse crowd gathers in the courtyard of Devikot (Devīkoṭ), a temple complex dedicated to the tantric goddess Tripura-Sundari (Tripurā-Sundarī) in the historic town of... more
Every year on the tenth day of the autumn Dasain (Daśaĩ) festival, a diverse crowd gathers in the courtyard of Devikot (Devīkoṭ), a temple complex dedicated to the tantric goddess Tripura-Sundari (Tripurā-Sundarī) in the historic town of Dolakha (Dolakhā), in Nepal's central-eastern district of the same name. 2 The crowd is here to watch two men go into trance and drink the blood of a live buffalo calf.
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Research Interests:
“Women and the Maobadi: Ideology and Agency in Nepal’s Maoist Movement” in Himal Southasian, January 2004. 17 (1): 19-29. Co-authored with Judith Pettigrew.
rhls P'lJh'l L (llhldns thL'links between the Manist nHwement and past histnrles of political vinlence In Ilil, d Nep, d le" plnIT linw a 19tH pnlice massacre of villagers in Piskar, Sinclhllpalcok, fostered I (lLal pnllllL'al... more
rhls P'lJh'l L (llhldns thL'links between the Manist nHwement and past histnrles of political vinlence In Ilil, d Nep, d le" plnIT linw a 19tH pnlice massacre of villagers in Piskar, Sinclhllpalcok, fostered I (lLal pnllllL'al cnnsci'llisness, which later became essemial tothe Manist movement's abihty to motivate partil'ipants. It the gr< lssr< Jnts level MllSt nbservers of the e< ldy phases nf the Maoist movement In NepallleatL'lI Il ellhn as an. lncnlllprehensI!
Why is ethnicity, inc., perceived as a tool of hegemonic state power in some contexts and a tool of resistance in others? How do we understand it as both at once? Can we actually see the paradigm itself as a site of contestation between... more
Why is ethnicity, inc., perceived as a tool of hegemonic state power
in some contexts and a tool of resistance in others? How do we understand it as both at once? Can we actually see the paradigm itself as a site of contestation between the state and its own margins, which can be manipulated by a range of political actors with divergent ideological and material objectives? Does control over the affective potentialities of ethnicity, inc., understood as the multifaceted nexus between state/market/society/subjectivity, become a deciding factor in larger political outcomes? How are social scientists complicit in such processes? Finally, what compels some groups to frame their struggles
in the terms of ethnicity, inc., at certain spatiotemporal junctures, while others do not—even within the same nation-state context?
I consider these questions through a comparative ethnohistorical exploration of two social movements in Nepal over the last half century, and the different ways in which the relationship between ethnicity and territory has figured within both struggles. Although the Dalit movement and other rights-based campaigns are also crucial to understanding Nepal’s ongoing political transformation (Darnal 2009), here I focus on the Adivasi Janajati (hereafter Janajati), or indigenous nationalities movement, and the Madhesi movement that has sought full political integration for the Madhesi population who live in the southern plains along the long open border with India. The architects of each of
these movements, as well as their cadres, have sustained different relationships to the potentialities of ethnicity, inc., over time.
in some contexts and a tool of resistance in others? How do we understand it as both at once? Can we actually see the paradigm itself as a site of contestation between the state and its own margins, which can be manipulated by a range of political actors with divergent ideological and material objectives? Does control over the affective potentialities of ethnicity, inc., understood as the multifaceted nexus between state/market/society/subjectivity, become a deciding factor in larger political outcomes? How are social scientists complicit in such processes? Finally, what compels some groups to frame their struggles
in the terms of ethnicity, inc., at certain spatiotemporal junctures, while others do not—even within the same nation-state context?
I consider these questions through a comparative ethnohistorical exploration of two social movements in Nepal over the last half century, and the different ways in which the relationship between ethnicity and territory has figured within both struggles. Although the Dalit movement and other rights-based campaigns are also crucial to understanding Nepal’s ongoing political transformation (Darnal 2009), here I focus on the Adivasi Janajati (hereafter Janajati), or indigenous nationalities movement, and the Madhesi movement that has sought full political integration for the Madhesi population who live in the southern plains along the long open border with India. The architects of each of
these movements, as well as their cadres, have sustained different relationships to the potentialities of ethnicity, inc., over time.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"Time, Oral Tradition, and Technology” in Memory. Philippe Tortell, Mark Turin, Margot Young, eds. Vancouver: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and University of British Columbia Press. 197-206. Co-authored with Andrew Martindale... more
"Time, Oral Tradition, and Technology” in Memory. Philippe Tortell, Mark Turin, Margot Young, eds. Vancouver: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and University of British Columbia Press. 197-206. Co-authored with Andrew Martindale and Mark Turin.
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“Temple Building in Secularising Nepal: Materializing Religion and Ethnicity in a State of Transformation” in Tolerance, Secularization, and Democratic Politics in South Asia. Humeira Iqtidar and Tanika Sarkar, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge... more
“Temple Building in Secularising Nepal: Materializing Religion and Ethnicity in a State of Transformation” in Tolerance, Secularization, and Democratic Politics in South Asia. Humeira Iqtidar and Tanika Sarkar, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“The Properties of Territory in Nepal’s State of Transformation” in Trans-Himalayan Borderlands: Livelihoods, Territorialities, and Modernity. Dan Smyer Yü and Jean Michaud, eds. Amsterdam: Amsterdan University Press.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Citizenship, Gender, and Statelessness in Nepal: Before and After the 2015 Constitution” in Understanding Statelessness. Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Philip Cole, eds. London: Routledge.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Circular Lives: Histories and Economies of Belonging in the Transnational Thangmi Village” in Facing Globalisation: Belonging in the Himalayas, Gérard Toffin and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, eds. Delhi: Sage Publications.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Living Practical Dharma: Chomo Khandru and the Himalayan Bon Tradition” in Buddhists: Understanding Buddhism Through Biography. Todd Lewis, ed. Wiley-Blackwell.
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“‘Jatiya sanghiyatabad’ ra sakaratmak kadamlai alagyaune kam” [Separating ‘ethnic federalism’ and affirmative action] in Asamanta ra sakaratmak kadam [Inequality and affirmative action]. Kathmandu: Social Science Baha. 94-98. Co-authored... more
“‘Jatiya sanghiyatabad’ ra sakaratmak kadamlai alagyaune kam” [Separating ‘ethnic federalism’ and affirmative action] in Asamanta ra sakaratmak kadam [Inequality and affirmative action]. Kathmandu: Social Science Baha. 94-98. Co-authored with Louise Tillin.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Restructuring the State, Restructuring Ethnicity: Situating Nepal in Contemporary Social Scientific Debates” in Ethnicity and Federalisation in Nepal. Chaitanya Mishra and Om Gurung, eds. Kathmandu: Central Department of... more
“Restructuring the State, Restructuring Ethnicity: Situating Nepal in Contemporary Social Scientific Debates” in Ethnicity and Federalisation in Nepal. Chaitanya Mishra and Om Gurung, eds. Kathmandu: Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Trivhuvan University.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Creating ‘Civilized’ Communists: A Quarter Century of Politicization in Rural Nepal” in Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, David Gellner, ed. Delhi: Sage Publications.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Nepal’s Two Polities: A View from Dolakha” in In Hope and Fear: Living Through the People’s War in Nepal, Prabin Manandhar and David Seddon, eds. Delhi: Adroit Publishers. 200-213. Co-authored with Mark Turin.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
Research Interests:
“The Path to Janasarkar in Dolakha District: Towards an Ethnography of the Maoist Movement” in Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, Michael Hutt, ed. London: Hurst & Co. 77-109. Co-authored with Mark Turin.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Nepalka gauma rajnitik chetana nirman: sthaniya itihasle sikaeko path” [The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal: Lessons from Local History” in Samabesi loktantra-ka adharharu [The Foundations of Inclusive Democracy],... more
“Nepalka gauma rajnitik chetana nirman: sthaniya itihasle sikaeko path” [The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal: Lessons from Local History” in Samabesi loktantra-ka adharharu [The Foundations of Inclusive Democracy], Mohan Mainali, ed. Kathmandu: Social Science Baha.
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
“Embodied Ancestors: Territory and the Body in Thangmi Death Rituals” in Territory and Identity in Tibet and the Himalayas. Katia Buffetrille and Hildegard Diemberger, eds. Leiden: Brill.
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“Appropriate Treasure: Reflections on Women, Buddhism, and Cross-Cultural Exchange” in Buddhist Women Across Cultures. Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed. Albany: SUNY Press.
Research Interests:
If naming is fundamentally a process of recognition, how does the practice of using pseudonyms—masking names—undermine ethnography’s potential as an instrument of recognition? In this essay, I reflect upon the potential unintended... more
If naming is fundamentally a process of recognition, how does the practice of using pseudonyms—masking names—undermine ethnography’s potential as an instrument of recognition? In this essay, I reflect upon the potential unintended consequences of pseudonyms in practice, in relation to three different ethnographic contexts: (1) research with members of the Thangmi community in Nepal and India about ethnic identity conducted in the 1990s and 2000s; (2) research about intersecting disasters in Nepal that I have been engaged in since the 2015 earthquakes there; and, (3) a collaborative research partnership with the Nepali-Canadian community in British Columbia, which emerged after 2015. In different ways, each of these experiences has prompted me to question the established anthropological practice of using pseudonyms, as well as the broader assumption that anonymizing research participants is always the most ethical approach.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
https://theconversation.com/learning-from-disasters-nepal-copes-with-coronavirus-pandemic-5-years-after-earthquake-134009 Does one kind of disaster prepare us for another? Five years after devastating earthquakes struck, Nepali citizens... more
https://theconversation.com/learning-from-disasters-nepal-copes-with-coronavirus-pandemic-5-years-after-earthquake-134009
Does one kind of disaster prepare us for another? Five years after devastating earthquakes struck, Nepali citizens and their government are pondering this question while under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After the earthquakes in 2015, nearly 9,000 people died, while more than 800,000 lost their homes and 2.8 million were displaced. In many rural areas, the earthquakes compounded the effects of a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006 but left the country in a period of protracted political instability.
Now, Nepal’s nearly 30 million citizens have been mandated to stay at home since March 24, and the tourism trade and other international supply chains upon which the country depends are severely curtailed. Despite relatively few confirmed cases earlier, the virus is now spreading through many of the country’s districts.
Nepal’s experience with these cascading upheavals can help us understand how multiple vulnerabilities may not only challenge communities, but also help them generate complex approaches to anticipating and mitigating systemic disruptions. These are skills needed to tackle the pandemic everywhere.
Does one kind of disaster prepare us for another? Five years after devastating earthquakes struck, Nepali citizens and their government are pondering this question while under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After the earthquakes in 2015, nearly 9,000 people died, while more than 800,000 lost their homes and 2.8 million were displaced. In many rural areas, the earthquakes compounded the effects of a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006 but left the country in a period of protracted political instability.
Now, Nepal’s nearly 30 million citizens have been mandated to stay at home since March 24, and the tourism trade and other international supply chains upon which the country depends are severely curtailed. Despite relatively few confirmed cases earlier, the virus is now spreading through many of the country’s districts.
Nepal’s experience with these cascading upheavals can help us understand how multiple vulnerabilities may not only challenge communities, but also help them generate complex approaches to anticipating and mitigating systemic disruptions. These are skills needed to tackle the pandemic everywhere.
Research Interests:
https://theconversation.com/new-laws-weaponize-citizenship-in-india-129027 Nearly two million residents of India’s eastern state of Assam are at risk of losing citizenship. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) published by the state... more
https://theconversation.com/new-laws-weaponize-citizenship-in-india-129027
Nearly two million residents of India’s eastern state of Assam are at risk of losing citizenship. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) published by the state government in August 2019 declares people who cannot prove they came to the state before March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan, to be foreigners.
According to Fernand de Varennes, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, this is potentially “the biggest exercise in statelessness since the Second World War.” Those excluded are primarily poor and marginalized people who can not adequately prove their citizenship.
As the 120 days granted to appeal for those excluded from the National Register of Citizens in Assam comes to an end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have announced they will implement the NRC across the country. This catastrophic move is part of a broader state project to unravel the secular, inclusive basis of citizenship in India by targeting the country’s Muslim minority and other marginalized communities.
Included in their plan is the unilateral repeal of Kashmir’s constitutional self-determination in August 2019, and the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in December 2019, which omits Muslim migrants from obtaining naturalized citizenship.
Nearly two million residents of India’s eastern state of Assam are at risk of losing citizenship. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) published by the state government in August 2019 declares people who cannot prove they came to the state before March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan, to be foreigners.
According to Fernand de Varennes, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, this is potentially “the biggest exercise in statelessness since the Second World War.” Those excluded are primarily poor and marginalized people who can not adequately prove their citizenship.
As the 120 days granted to appeal for those excluded from the National Register of Citizens in Assam comes to an end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have announced they will implement the NRC across the country. This catastrophic move is part of a broader state project to unravel the secular, inclusive basis of citizenship in India by targeting the country’s Muslim minority and other marginalized communities.
Included in their plan is the unilateral repeal of Kashmir’s constitutional self-determination in August 2019, and the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in December 2019, which omits Muslim migrants from obtaining naturalized citizenship.
Research Interests:
Co-authored with Bina Limbu, Manoj Suji, Jeevan Baniya Recent reports by Transparency International-Nepal and articles have characterised many beneficiaries of the Nepal government’s grants for post-earthquake housing reconstruction as... more
Co-authored with Bina Limbu, Manoj Suji, Jeevan Baniya
Recent reports by Transparency International-Nepal and articles have characterised many beneficiaries of the Nepal government’s grants for post-earthquake housing reconstruction as ‘fake victims’. Those who have accepted the first tranche of funding but ‘failed’ to begin reconstruction, or even worse, have built one-roomed houses not suitable for family life, are portrayed as wilfully corrupt manipulators of resources entrusted to them by a benevolent state.
Our collaborative ethnographic research conducted in three earthquake-affected districts (Bhaktapur, Dhading and Sindhupalchok) over the last year beginning in March 2017 tells a different story. Our qualitative data overwhelmingly shows that earthquake-affected citizens have encountered multiple obstacles in accessing and deploying reconstruction grants. They have struggled to understand the requirements for receiving grants and loans; once understood, have faced difficulties in meeting those requirements, usually due to challenges in securing citizenship or land tenure documentation; then suffered from lack of sufficient resources to build homes that suit their socio-cultural needs while also complying with new building codes; and experienced various forms of political pressure due to extremely tight deadlines. These have prevented families from engaging in long-term economic planning that might have enabled complementary use of the grants and other forms of personal income and labour resources.
For all of these reasons, we would like to point out the fallacy inherent in the term ‘fake victims’ as defined by the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) and other organisations.
https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2019/02/19/reconstruction-conundrums
Recent reports by Transparency International-Nepal and articles have characterised many beneficiaries of the Nepal government’s grants for post-earthquake housing reconstruction as ‘fake victims’. Those who have accepted the first tranche of funding but ‘failed’ to begin reconstruction, or even worse, have built one-roomed houses not suitable for family life, are portrayed as wilfully corrupt manipulators of resources entrusted to them by a benevolent state.
Our collaborative ethnographic research conducted in three earthquake-affected districts (Bhaktapur, Dhading and Sindhupalchok) over the last year beginning in March 2017 tells a different story. Our qualitative data overwhelmingly shows that earthquake-affected citizens have encountered multiple obstacles in accessing and deploying reconstruction grants. They have struggled to understand the requirements for receiving grants and loans; once understood, have faced difficulties in meeting those requirements, usually due to challenges in securing citizenship or land tenure documentation; then suffered from lack of sufficient resources to build homes that suit their socio-cultural needs while also complying with new building codes; and experienced various forms of political pressure due to extremely tight deadlines. These have prevented families from engaging in long-term economic planning that might have enabled complementary use of the grants and other forms of personal income and labour resources.
For all of these reasons, we would like to point out the fallacy inherent in the term ‘fake victims’ as defined by the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) and other organisations.
https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2019/02/19/reconstruction-conundrums
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
Research Interests: Anthropology and Nepal
Shneiderman, Sara. "Dots on the Map: Anthropological Locations and Responses to Nepal’s Earthquakes." Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology website, October 14, 2015.... more
Shneiderman, Sara. "Dots on the Map: Anthropological Locations and Responses to Nepal’s Earthquakes." Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology website, October 14, 2015. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/738-dots-on-the-map-anthropological-locations-and-responses-to-nepal-s-earthquakes
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Post for University of Pennsylvania Press blog about the challenges facing the Thangmi communities of Nepal's Dolakha and Sindhupalchok districts after the earthquakes, and some of the organizations who are supporting them.
Asia Pacific Memo, May 1, 2015. THIS ARTICLE MAY BE ACCESSED FOR FREE, CLICK LINK TO ASIA PACIFIC MEMO ABOVE
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April 27, 2015 OpEd in the Globe and Mail
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Asia Pacific Memo, February 12, 2015
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
With its concise yet broadly sweeping title, Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik's edited volume Women in Tibet is a definitive contribution to the literature on women's experiences in Tibetan culture. The volume's composition reflects the... more
With its concise yet broadly sweeping title, Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik's edited volume Women in Tibet is a definitive contribution to the literature on women's experiences in Tibetan culture. The volume's composition reflects the breadth of contemporary Tibetan Studies, with chapters written by historians, philologists, comparative religion scholars and anthropologists, all of whom apply their own methodological approaches to a range of chronologically and geographically disparate subjects.
With its concise yet broad-sweeping title, Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik's edited volume on Women in Tibet is positioned as a definitive contribution to the literature on women's experiences in the Tibetan cultural area. The composition... more
With its concise yet broad-sweeping title, Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik's edited volume on Women in Tibet is positioned as a definitive contribution to the literature on women's experiences in the Tibetan cultural area. The composition of the volume reflects the diversity of contemporary Tibetan Studies, with chapters by historians, philologists, scholars of comparative religion, and anthropologists, who apply their diverse methodological approaches to ar ange of chronologically and geographically disparate subjects.
‘The Himalaya’ has been invoked as an analytical category by a range of actors over time, from scientific, social scientific, humanities, and applied backgrounds. A ‘Himalayan’ framing has long served as a valuable heuristic for... more
‘The Himalaya’ has been invoked as an analytical category by a range of actors over time, from scientific, social scientific, humanities, and applied backgrounds. A ‘Himalayan’ framing has long served as a valuable heuristic for understanding the
sweep of histories, societies, and environments that connect the region. Yet that same framing has recently emerged as a problem of scale: focusing on commonalities obscures difference, and thus diversity; focusing on difference obscures commonalities, and thus region-wide affinities. Does using
‘Himalaya’ as a broad regional signifier invoke an ecological or
cultural determinism that deemphasizes the specificity of political history? Or does it legitimately recognize the webs of ecological, economic and cultural connectivity that have bound together complex entities over time? New Himalayan
scholarship, oriented toward connectivity and inclusion,
empowered by new collaborations and analytical tools, might learn from its past legacy and ultimately move beyond it. How can new voices thus be included to express greater
diversity in Himalayan Studies?
sweep of histories, societies, and environments that connect the region. Yet that same framing has recently emerged as a problem of scale: focusing on commonalities obscures difference, and thus diversity; focusing on difference obscures commonalities, and thus region-wide affinities. Does using
‘Himalaya’ as a broad regional signifier invoke an ecological or
cultural determinism that deemphasizes the specificity of political history? Or does it legitimately recognize the webs of ecological, economic and cultural connectivity that have bound together complex entities over time? New Himalayan
scholarship, oriented toward connectivity and inclusion,
empowered by new collaborations and analytical tools, might learn from its past legacy and ultimately move beyond it. How can new voices thus be included to express greater
diversity in Himalayan Studies?
Research Interests:
Mary Des Chene: I want to do three things this evening. First, some audience members asked me to discuss a several issues that were neglected during the paper sessions. Second, Iwant to respond to some things Iheard in the afternoon... more
Mary Des Chene: I want to do three things this evening. First, some audience members asked me to discuss a several issues that were neglected during the paper sessions. Second, Iwant to respond to some things Iheard in the afternoon sessions. Lastly, I want to suggest some issues that we all need to be thmkmg about.
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The last decade has marked the purported end of several conflicts in South Asia: the 2003 ceasefire along the Indo–Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir, the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the civil war between Maoist insurgents and... more
The last decade has marked the purported end of several conflicts in South Asia: the 2003 ceasefire along the Indo–Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir, the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the civil war between Maoist insurgents and state forces in Nepal, the 2009 LTTE defeat in Sri Lanka, and the imminent withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. This Hot Spots series explores the implications of “post-conflict” as an analytical and political category by situating recent South Asian experiences within broader anthropological debates over social, political, and economic transformation. As anthropologists, we go beyond the evaluative assessments of peace-building and human-rights reports to reveal the complexities of life and politics in the gray areas between war and peace. In so doing, these essays acknowledge the everyday effects of the post-conflict label beyond the technocratic mechanisms that seek to define it and declare resolution, yielding important insights for policymakers and development actors, as well as scholars from a range of policy-engaged disciplines. We invite you to join the conversation.
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Research Interests: Anthropology and Place
2013 (Edited with Sara Shneiderman). Special Issue of Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology Spring 2013. Vol 65.
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Chomo Khandru was 80 years old when we met. I was 20. She welcomed me into her home for one night, which soon turned into many. It was 1995, and I had traveled to the ethnically Tibetan area of the Nepal Himalayas known as Mustang to... more
Chomo Khandru was 80 years old when we met. I was 20. She welcomed me into her home for one night, which soon turned into many. It was 1995, and I had traveled to the ethnically Tibetan area of the Nepal Himalayas known as Mustang to conduct research on the lives of chomo—female religious practitioners of the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon traditions who live independently in villages, without the support of an institutional monastic setting.1 Chomo Khandru was the oldest woman in Lubra, a tiny settlement of 14 houses sheltered in a side canyon of the mighty Kali Gandaki river, and she was arguably the senior most chomo in the entire area (figure 3.1). She was an old woman with much to teach and no disciples, and I was an eager young student. As I gained her trust, the story of her life as both a celibate ascetic and a worldly trader on the historic Tibet to India salt-grain trading trail unfolded. With an unusually sharp memory for dates, names, and places, and a down-to-earth way of explaining abstract dharmic (religious) concepts, she was a gifted raconteur and teacher. It became clear that the experience of telling her story and explaining her beliefs was important to her, just as the experience of listening was to me. Together we entered the special space of transmission. I use the word in its spiritual sense, where it implies the ritual passing of knowledge and practice from one generation to another.2
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This article examines the interests and concerns of two ethnic communities straddling the Sino-Tibetan borderlands—the Gyalrongwa and Qiangzu—in the reconfigurations of their relations with the Chinese state, the Han, the Tibetans, and... more
This article examines the interests and concerns of two ethnic communities straddling the Sino-Tibetan borderlands—the Gyalrongwa and Qiangzu—in the reconfigurations of their relations with the Chinese state, the Han, the Tibetans, and with each other, especially since 2008. I argue that both the Gyalrongwa and Qiangzu employ various tactics for their anticipated goals, notably strategic marginality, dissimilation through analogy, or the marginal’s scapegoating, partly as responses to the Tibetan unrest and Sichuan earthquake. The differences and similarities in their authenticity and other claims as well as the approaches and strategies adopted are primarily outcomes of their hybridized identities and their marginal status vis-à-vis the Han state and Tibetans in history and at present. Above all, I adopt and expand the natural science convergence zone concept to identify multifarious manifestations and layers of the center-periphery paradigm as well as processes and effects of convergences among multiple external and internal forces at borders and margins. In provoking a further critical analysis and comparison, I bring forth Hong Kong’s unique role as both a world metropolis and a peripheral Chinese city. I then conclude with open-ended questions regarding this theoretical model’s prospects and challenges in examining and comparing a diverse range of borders and margins (and beyond) across time and space, including various subcultures in urban and other settings.
P.S. I am grateful to Jean Michaud, Sara Shneiderman, Hans Steinmüller, Michael Wang (Mingke Wang 王明柯) and Yinong Zhang 张亦农 for their comments and truly enjoy this type of in-depth dialogue.
P.S. I am grateful to Jean Michaud, Sara Shneiderman, Hans Steinmüller, Michael Wang (Mingke Wang 王明柯) and Yinong Zhang 张亦农 for their comments and truly enjoy this type of in-depth dialogue.