The Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya – Kathmandu, Nepal
Self Help Group (SHG) programs among women have played a pivotal role in the Global South as a cost-effective mechanism to provide financial services to unreached poor, as well as to strengthening women’s socio-economic capacities. Wales and Deshmukh (2011) suggest that SHG is instrumental to women’s empowerment and rural entrepreneurship, which brings individual and collective …
Self Help Group’s Effects on Women’s Empowerment Read More »
Nepal’s first national park, Chitwan National Park, offers a rich opportunity to study the relations between parks and people in South Asia. Founded in 1973, Chitwan Park falls within the Rapti Valley, an inner tarai valley. The Rapti Valley includes some of most important tall grasslands in the world, and an exceptionally high density of …
This paper examines the current status of forest tenure regimes (both legal and de facto) within the twelve Terai districts from Rautahat to Kanchanpur. The Terai is a large lowland belt that is rapidly developing with most of its 7.35 million population having settled in waves of migration over time. The Terai is at once …
Forest Futures: Tenure Mosaics of Nepal’s Terai Arc Landscape Read More »
The association of religion and development has received increasing attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century (Narayan et al 2000, Alkire 2006, Haynes 2007, Clarke 2011, Rakodi 2011, Tomalin 2013). This is partly as a result of the failure of the secular approach of development to achieve economic growth (Haynes 2007, Lunn 2009) and …
This presentation proposes to shine light on the anthropology of kinship in Nepal in a globalised context, with a specific focus on inter-caste, inter-ethnic or inter-religious marriages. Our research object, “the transformations of the matrimonial practices of urbanized populations in Nepal”, falls within the wider field of marriage or alliance. Literature is abundant on this …
Intermarriage and Matrimonial Practices in Kathmandu Read More »
Marriage is one of the universal social institutions found in every society. It establishes not only conjugal relations between husband and wife, but also establishes relations between families. The population of Nepal consists of numerous racial, cultural, religious and linguistic groups who follow their own patterns of marriage. Since Nepal was a Hindu state before …
Intermarriages and Generational Relations: A Sociological Study in Kathmandu City Read More »
Research question: This paper is an inquiry into the psychology of caste and identity in Nepal. It asks whether intercaste marriage can change the way in which people think of caste, and if so, how and to what extent. A central matter of scrutiny in the paper is whether people who enter intercaste marriages are …
Can Inter-caste Marriage Change Perceptions of Caste? Read More »
This essay is the first qualitative undertaking to study sickle cell disease (SCD) in Nepal and aims to analyze how diseases have played an important role in defining state‐society relation particularly in Nepal’s Tarai. While rooting this essay in the long trajectory of the Tarai’s relationship with malaria; it simultaneously focuses on genetic blood disorders …
Biological Statehood: Sickle Cell Disease & Citizenship in Contemporary Nepal Read More »
From the vantage of Farwest Nepal’s Hill dwelling peoples, the Tarai has been historically experienced and represented as inhospitable for year‐round residence due in part to malaria and other diseases thought to be innate to the Tarai environment. By the mid‐ twentieth century, however, malaria eradication projects began contributing to the emergence of a new …
The Tarai of Morang, until the early 20th century, was reported to be “the most malarious and unhealthy district” (Oldfield, 1881, p. 61‐622). While outsiders feared the malaria and harsh environmental conditions of the Tarai, the aboriginal inhabitants, the Tarai ādivāsi such as Dhimal, Meche, Tharu, Koch and others who survived malaria, transformed these seemingly …