The Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya – Kathmandu, Nepal

Conference Year: 2017

Involuntary Childlessness in Nepal: Instances of Competition, Contestations, and Conflicts, among the Plural Healing Practices and Healing Journeys

This paper is a part of an ongoing PhD project that seeks to fill the gap that exists in the current scholarship on infertility, which is heavily skewed toward female infertility and biomedical interventions. The major objective of the project is to understand how different healing practices that exist in the medically plural landscape in …

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Social Stratification and Dalit Leadership in Nepal: An Ethnographic Study of a Village in Western Nepal

Caste-based social stratification has placed Dalits in the lowest stratum of society and hence denied their involvement, as ‘Untouchables’, in every aspect of life in Nepal. The repercussion of the age-old system is ultimately reflected in the social and political leadership as well. The state and the political parties adopted inclusive and participatory democracy quite …

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Remote Response: International Humanitarianism and Nepal’s 2015 Earthquakes

This paper will focus on analysing the responses of UN agencies and international NGOs to the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. This will include discussion of how international relief was carried out, the ways in which aid programmes drew on new humanitarian practices and how international responses intersected with and legitimised Nepal Government responses. The paper argues …

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The Post-war Direction in Nepal: Deepening Capital, Deepening Inequality

The last decade in Nepal has encompassed both great hope and bitter disillusionment over the trajectory of politics and development. While challenges to the status quo over the past three decades – the people’s movements, the Madhesi uprisings and the People’s War – have contained within them not only a series of political demands, but …

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Enabling ‘business as usual’: Donors and Peacebuilding in Nepal Post 2006

Political culture, corruption, the feudal state and other specifically ‘Nepali’ characteristics form key cornerstones of analyses examining the return to traditionalist politics in post-2006 Nepal.  The reassertion of the political right has been expressed not least in the 2015 Constitution, the intransigence of the political elites in response to the Madhesi uprisings, the glaring lack …

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The Public Life of a Royal Scribe: Displaying Indra’s Flag in 18th Century Kathmandu

Though celebrated virtually nowhere in India today, the presence of the festival of Indra in Sanskrit texts of many different genre signals the prevalence of its annual performance throughout India at the turn of the first millennium. Celebrated widely at a popular level, this festival also served official ends, as royal authors employed this lofty …

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Beyond ‘Hill Cattle’ and the ‘Holy Cow’, Towards a Haptic History of Animals

This paper will examine human-cattle interactions in the Kumaun Hills under British colonial rule to problematize persistent equations between ‘native culture’ and timeless, pristine ‘nature’. It will challenge conventional environmental histories which describe Kumauni life in terms of the constraints of physical geography. Cattle and Kumauni conceptions of animals will thus emerge as central agents …

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Charismatic Mediumship and Traditional Priesthood: Possession in Himalayan Hinduism

In the Indian Himalayas, mediums who operate as channels through which deities can communicate with their devotees, function alongside priests who serve local deities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the lecture will focus on the question of what is the relation between these two religious roles? We will describe the diverse functions of the religious priests …

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Rebuilding Nepal: Women’s Roles in Political Transition and Post-Disaster Recovery

Communities experiencing or emerging from conflict are often affected by natural disasters as well, creating unique and intersecting challenges. It is important to understand how fragile communities respond to and address both conflict and disaster relief, rather than examining these as separate and distinct processes. Furthermore, it is crucial to understand the key roles that women …

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