Author: Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Pascale Dollfus/
Editor(s): Marie Lecomte-Tilouine / Pascale Dollfus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 341
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195655923
Description
The multi-ethnic and multi-caste communities of the Himalayan region are today witnessing the revival of ethnic and religious consciousness leading to widespread social and political upheaval. This collection engages with the rapid social change and acute religious and identity crises that have emerged in an area extending from Gilgit to Eastern Nepal.
The volume asks if the rise of tribal groups within the region’s elaborate caste system in indicative of an opposition to the nation-state or is a sign of modernity. How are matters of ethnic identity defined and used today? And further, have representations of collective identity and a sense of ethnic belonging changed? In answering these questions, the contributors explore representations of the self and the other among the region’s social groups through spatial, historical, and cultural prisms.
Each essay in this collection is supplemented by a commentary that illustrates the plurality of approaches to studying the Himalayan region. While appraising the discourse on selfhood and identity, the essays suggest new directions in method and disciplinary focus that go beyond conventional understanding of notions of identity among Himalayan peoples.
This important volume on life, society, and culture in the Himalayas will be useful to students, teachers and researchers of social and cultural anthropology, sociology history, politics, ethnicity, literature, and culture. It will also be of interest to policy-makers, journalists and the informed lay reader.
Contents
CONTRIBUTORS
Introduction
Reading Sumnima
Comments
Washing your Neighbour’s God
Buddhist Royal Ritual in Fourteenth Century Himalayan Kingdoms
Comments
From Cultural Hierarchies to a hierarchy of Multiculturalisms: The Case of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal
Comments
Differences and Distances
Contested Ethnic Markers in Local and National Communities
Comments
Bahuns: Ethnicity without an Ethnic Group
Comments
Identity and Power in a Conflictual Environment
Comments
Dumji and Zhindak
Local Festival Performance and Patronage as a Crucial Source of Sherpa identity
Comments
The Janajati and the Nepali State
Aspects of identity and Integration
Comments
Insiders and Outsiders
Community and identity in Kumaon, North India
Comments
The Art of Representation
Domesticating Ladakhi Identity
Comments
Selves and Others
Representing Multiplicities of difference in Gilgit, Northern Areas of Pakistan
Comments
Concluding Remarks