964 research outputs found
The role of civil society in promoting political accountability in fragile states : the case of Tajikistan / Ina Zharkevich
No full textMoney and blood: remittances as a substance of relatedness in transnational families in Nepal
No full textHoffmann, Michael. The partial revolution: labour, social movements and the invisible handof Mao in Western Nepal. 214 pp., maps, illus.,bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. £85.00 (cloth)
No full textGender, marriage, and the dynamic of (im)mobility in the mid-Western hills of Nepal
No full textThis paper explores the relationship between gender, marriage, and (im)mobility in rural hilly areas of mid-Western Nepal, showing how (1) the mobility of men is predicated on the ‘immobility’ of women, with marriage being key to the gendered dynamic of (im)mobility, (2) how the construction of hegemonic masculinity, exemplified by a figure of a successful international migrant, is inseparable from an ideal of femininity vested in the figure of a virtuous domesticated housewife. Examining different scales of mobility, the paper cautions against posing a rigid dichotomy between ‘mobile men’ and ‘immobile’ women, illustrating that the ‘left behind’ wives experience an impressive degree of everyday mobility in contrast to their internationally mobile husbands
Maoist people's war and the revolution of everyday life in Nepal
No full textThis book is an ethnography of social change and norm-remaking brought about by the Maoist People’s War in Nepal between 1996 and 2006. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with people in the former Maoist heartland, including both committed Maoist revolutionaries and ‘reluctant rebels’, it explores how a remote Himalayan village was forged as the centre of the Maoist rebellion, how its inhabitants coped with the situation of war, how they came to embrace the Maoist project and maintain ordinary life during war. Contrary to the dominant narrative, even in the Maoist capital, hailed as a village of resistance, a lot of ordinary people were only ‘reluctant rebels’ who supported the Maoists because of kinship ties, moral solidarity, and compliance with the Maoist regime of governance. By focusing on the relational side of the Maoist movement – kinship ties between ordinary villagers and guerrillas, fraternal and affective bonds within the Maoist movement – the book explores the social processes and relationships through which the People’s War became possible.
The book illuminates how the everyday became a primary site of revolution in Nepal: of crafting new subjectivities, normalizing previously transgressive norms, such as beef-eating and inter-caste commensality, and reconfiguring the ways people act in and think about the world. Revolution in Nepal came about not as a result of war, but rather in the process of war, with the praxis of revolutionary modes of sociality and ‘embodied change’ being key to transforming people’s practical consciousness. Rather than being simply an outcome of the Maoist policies or ideas, much of the change was a result of embodied experiences of radically new ways of relating across caste, class and gender divides. By having recreated their everyday practice—often as part of the exceptional times of war and rules that apply in times of crisis—people in the Maoist base area transformed not only their values, but also the rigid social hierarchies structuring Nepali society
'When Gods return to their homeland in the Himalayas': Maoism, religion, and change in the model village of Thabang, mid-western Nepal
No full textBased on ethnographic research in the former Maoist base area of Nepal, this chapter explores the impact of the People’s War and Maoist ideology on religious beliefs and practices in Nepal. Drawing on the parable of the ‘flight of Gods’ and on the life history of one of the village elders, the chapter explores the gradual demise of Hinduism as a dominant mode of religious practice and weaves together key themes for understanding religious change engendered by the conflict -- de-sacralisation of once sacred spaces and once sacred polity, transgression of the boundaries between purity and pollution, increasing privatisation of religious practices, and creation of the vacuum in transcendent authority which in many cases is filled by new religious or quasi-religious movements, such as Christianity and Maoism itself
'Changing times': war and social transformation in Mid-Western Nepal
No full textThis thesis is an ethnographic account of social change, triggered by the civil war in Nepal (1996-2006). Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in the village of Thabang, the war-time capital of the Maoist base area, this thesis explores the transformative impact of the conflict on people’s everyday lives and on the constitution of key hierarchies structuring Nepali society. Rather than focusing on violence and fear – the commonly researched themes in warzones – the thesis examines people’s everyday social and embodied practices during the war and its aftermath, arguing that these remain central to our understanding of war-time social processes and the ways in which they shape the contours of post-conflict society. By focusing on mundane practices – such as meat-eating and alcohol-drinking, raising livestock and worshipping gods – the thesis demonstrates how change at the micro-level is illustrative of a profound transformation in the social structures constituting Nepali society. Theoretically, the thesis seeks to understand how the situation of war re-orders society: in this case, how people in the Maoist base area interiorized formerly transgressive norms and practices, and how these practices were normalized in the post-conflict environment. The research revealed that much of the change triggered by the conflict came as a result of the ‘exceptional’ times of war and the necessity to follow ‘rules that apply in times of crisis’. Thus, in adopting transgressive practices during the conflict, people were responding to the expediency of war-time rather than following Maoist war-time policies or ‘propaganda’. Furthermore, while adopting hitherto unimaginable practices and making them into habitual action, people transformed the rigid social structures, without necessarily intending to do so. The thesis puts particular stress on the centrality of unintended consequences in social change, the power of embodied practice in making change real, and the ways in which agency and structure are mutually constitutive
‘We are in the process’: The exploitation of hope and the political economy of waiting among the aspiring irregular migrants in Nepal
No full text‘We are in the process’ was the phrase used by my Nepali interlocutors, soon-to-be migrants, who were waiting for their departure abroad for months on end. Based on conversations with irregular migrants, this paper explores the relationship between time and power, focusing on the political economy of waiting. It suggests that making people wait has become a key technique of governmentality used by the migration industry actors to control aspiring migrants’ movement, exploit their desires and hopes, and extract surplus value, turning the migration industry in Nepal into a major system of profiteering. Forcing aspiring migrants to wait in a state of suspense (not boredom) for departures that are imminent but not certain, unscrupulous brokers create an affective state in suspended subjects, which allows those in power to prey on migrants’ vulnerability and their hope for a better life, pushing many of the aspiring migrants into grave debt
'When Gods return to their homeland in the Himalayas': Maoism, religion, and change in the model village of Thabang, mid-western Nepal
No full textBased on ethnographic research in the former Maoist base area of Nepal, this chapter explores the impact of the People’s War and Maoist ideology on religious beliefs and practices in Nepal. Drawing on the parable of the ‘flight of Gods’ and on the life history of one of the village elders, the chapter explores the gradual demise of Hinduism as a dominant mode of religious practice and weaves together key themes for understanding religious change engendered by the conflict -- de-sacralisation of once sacred spaces and once sacred polity, transgression of the boundaries between purity and pollution, increasing privatisation of religious practices, and creation of the vacuum in transcendent authority which in many cases is filled by new religious or quasi-religious movements, such as Christianity and Maoism itself
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