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Lecture Series XVI
Martin Gaenszle
on

Script and Orality in the Kiranti Language Movement

The culture of the Kiranti groups in East Nepal is characterized by rich and vivid oral traditions, generally known as mundhum (or related terms). Among both Rai and Limbu, the spoken word – as transmitted by the ancestors – is highly valued: myths and legends are widely known and recounted, and there is hardly a ritual without lengthy recitations that the practioners know by heart. And yet, the existence of a script of one’s own has played an important role in Kiranti self-representation and the formation of identity. The lecture deals with this seeming contradiction and draws on the ethnography of oral tradition and the history of the Kiranti language movement in order to clarify the reasons for this valuation of scriptural texts. The scope of the oral tradition is illustrated with examples from fieldwork among various Rai groups. The Limbu script has a history that goes back to the famous Srijanga in the 18th century, but its effective dissemination took off only in the 20th century through Phalgunanda and I.S. Chemjong. The Rai script is a fairly recent invention and its history appears to be modeled on that of the Limbu’s. In any case, in recent times, there appears to be a revaluation of the oral, as modern media and technologies facilitate documentation and conservation of speech in its performative context.}

Martin Gaenszle is professor at Heidelberg University and affiliated to the South Asia Institute. As a social and cultural anthropologist, he has done fieldwork in East Nepal and Banaras in India. Presently he is employed with Leipzig University and works together with linguists in the Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, carried out in collaboration with Tribhuvan University. His publications include Origins and Migrations: Kinship, Mythology and Ethnic Identity among the Mewahang Rai (Mandala Book Point & The Mountain Institute, 2000) and Ancestral Voices: Oral Ritual Texts and their Social Contexts among the Mewahang Rai of East Nepal (LIT-Verlag, 2002).


This lecture is organized in association with Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University
and South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg.

Time: 4:45 pm
Date: 12 April, 2006 (Wednesday)
Venue: Baggikhana, Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka

(Admission open to all. Please direct queries to 5548142. To reach Baggikhana, turn right into the gateway adjoining the Lalitpur District Post Office, about 50 metres before Patan Dhoka while coming from the direction of the Engineering Campus.)
 

Lecture Series XV

Dilli Ram Dahal
On
Doing Field Work in the United States of America and Nepal:

Some Cross-Cultural Experiences 

(“Fieldwork” is the hallmark of anthropology. Nobody can become a good anthropologist without doing fieldwork. This lecture briefly reflects my own cross-cultural experiences of doing fieldwork in the United States of America (USA), indicating how an anthropologist like me, from a developing country, could encounter many problems. The American fieldwork experiences are gathered in connection with the research project on “The Work and the Family Life of the Industrial Midwest” carried out by the Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life (CEEL), University of Michigan during the period of 2000-2001.

Doing ethnographic fieldwork in America is not easy and a researcher must be prepared to encounter both structural and cultural problems. It is my observation that doing ethnographic research is gradually becoming difficult in the USA in the name of “human subject research” and with the changing values of American families over the last 40 years. In contrast, the “human subject research“ with the nature of ethnographic mode is much easier in developing countries such as Nepal even today.) 

Dilli Ram Dahal holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu. He is currently Professor at the Center for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University. Among the numerous books and articles he has published are "Land and Migration in Far Western Nepal" (1977) co-written with Navin Rai and A.E. Manzardo; "Forestry User Groups: A Case Study of Forestry User Groups in Dhankuta, Sankhuwasabha and Ilam Districts of the Eastern Hill Region of Nepal" (1994); "A Nepali Anthropologist in America: Reflections on Fieldwork Among Friends" published in Contributions to Nepalese Studies (2004); and "Social Composition of the Population: Caste/Ethnicity and Religion in Nepal" published as Chapter 3 in Population Monograph of Nepal (2003).  

Time: 4:00 pm
Date: 17 March, 2006 (Friday)
Venue: Baggikhana, Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka

(Admission open to all. Please direct queries to 5548142. To reach Baggikhana, turn right into the gateway adjoining the Lalitpur District Post Office, about 50 metres before Patan Dhoka while coming from the direction of the Engineering Campus.)

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XIV – 16 December, 2005
Jagannath Adhikari
On

Globalization and the Securitization of Migration:

The Context of Nepali Foreign Labour Migrants and Sustainable Livelihood

______________________

(Migrant labourers currently face two concurrent processes: an increase in globalization and the securitization of migration. While the former has provided opportunities in international labour migration, the latter, relating to the linking of migration with security concerns, has created difficulties to it.

Nepali labourers have been able to increase their access to the ‘global labour market’ mainly through their own efforts, although not without much difficulty, and remittance is now considered the main contributor to poverty reduction in the country. Still, this sector has its own share of problems. Concerns are being raised over the growing number of abuses of human and labour rights of the migrant labourers. Questions have also been raised over the actual contribution of international labour migration to the sustainable livelihood of the people. Advocacy for desecuritization of migration in order to improve human security at both labour-receiving and sending countries; provision of social protection and opportunities to increase the capacity of migrant labourers; and the preservation of their human rights will significantly benefit them in the process of globalization.) 

Jagannath Adhikari is a social scientist interested in researching various aspects of development – labour migration, food security, environmental justice and resource management, urban change, etc. His first book The Beginnings of Agrarian Change looks at changes in society and the economy brought about by foreign income. In New Lahure, which he has co-authored, foreign labour migration and its impact on rural livelihood are discussed in detail. Other publications of his include Pokhara: Biography of a Town, Debate on Poverty in Nepal and Food Crisis in Nepal. For the last three years, he has been working as Convener of Martin Chautari, Thapathali, Kathmandu.

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XIII - 27 October, 2005

Organised in association with Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University
and South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg

Elvira Graner
on

Mapping Actors in Carpet Production in the Kathmandu Valley:
A Relational Economic Geography
___________________

(The carpet ‘industry’ has played a most prominent role in the Nepali economy, both in terms of growth in foreign exchange earnings and the labour market. Set up in order to secure the livelihoods of Tibetan refugees back in the 1960s, it has experienced tremendous growth as well as change over the past four decades. Yet, during the mid 1990s, the industry witnessed a drastic decline, due to media attacks for environmental degradation and, above all, child labour. In order to understand these changes, a study has been carried out by the lecturer to analyse key actors involved in different stages of the industry’s development. This ‘inventory’ is based on a theoretical framework of  ‘relational’ economic geography, and aims at providing a relational analysis, ‘mapping’ the spaces of the respective actors.)

Elvira Graner is a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University in Germany. She carried out her field work on community forestry in Nepal from 1992 to 1994, and received her doctoral degree from Freiburg University, Germany in 1996. After joining the SAI at Heidelberg, she was appointed the Resident Representative at the Institute's Kathmandu office for the year 1996-97 and again from 2003 to 2005. Prior to this engagement, she undertook a research project from 1998 to 2001, funded by the German Research Council (DFG), focusing on the production of carpets in the Kathmandu Valley. Her current research interests are in international labour migration and education.

....

Lecture Series XIII

Organised in association with Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University
and South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg

Elvira Graner

on

Mapping Actors in Carpet Production in the Kathmandu Valley:
A Relational Economic Geography
(The carpet ‘industry’ has played a most prominent role in the Nepali economy, both in terms of growth in foreign exchange earnings and the labour market. Set up in order to secure the livelihoods of Tibetan refugees back in the 1960s, it has experienced tremendous growth as well as change over the past four decades. Yet, during the mid 1990s, the industry witnessed a drastic decline, due to media attacks for environmental degradation and, above all, child labour. In order to understand these changes, a study has been carried out by the lecturer to analyse key actors involved in different stages of the industry’s development. This ‘inventory’ is based on a theoretical framework of  ‘relational’ economic geography, and aims at providing a relational analysis, ‘mapping’ the spaces of the respective actors.)
______________________
Elvira Graner is a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University in Germany. She carried out her field work on community forestry in Nepal from 1992 to 1994, and received her doctoral degree from Freiburg University, Germany in 1996. After joining the SAI at Heidelberg, she was appointed the Resident Representative at the Institute's Kathmandu office for the year 1996-97 and again from 2003 to 2005. Prior to this engagement, she undertook a research project from 1998 to 2001, funded by the German Research Council (DFG), focusing on the production of carpets in the Kathmandu Valley. Her current research interests are in international labour migration and education.

Time: 4 pm
Date: 27 October, 2005 (Thursday)
Venue: Baggikhana, Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka
(Admission open to all. Please direct queries to 5548142. To reach Baggikhana, turn right into the gateway adjoining the Lalitpur District Post Office, about 50 metres before Patan Dhoka while coming from the direction of the Engineering Campus.)
 

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XII - 9 August, 2004
Ian Harper

on

Missions and medicine in Nepal: Some anthropological reflections
______________________
( Nepal has a very wide range of practitioners dealing in “health”, including those practicing in medicine and Ayurveda, as well as mediums and shamans. As a medical anthropologist, one of my particular interests is in the relationships between these healers within broader social and political fields. In this lecture I shall present aspects of research done into these relations in the district of Palpa in 1998 - 2000. Particularly, I shall focus on the presence of the very popular and busy United Mission to Nepal (UMN) hospital in Tansen, as this has had a significant impact on how health is understood and related to in the area. To begin to appreciate this impact locally, and more broadly, I will focus on a number of issues. I will start with how the hospital was perceived locally, and how the early missionaries were particularly fondly remembered. We will also focus on aspects of written accounts of the early days around the setting up of the hospital in the 1950s. This will lead us to touch on bird watching, the links between this and the medical enterprise as a process of scientific perception, and to explore the relations between medicine and broader developmental strategies. Finally, I shall attempt to interpret how this popular mission hospital [and its associated biomedical efficacy] has also, consequently, become linked by many to an ideological perception of “foreignness”. )
Ian Harper is a medical anthropologist based at the University of Edinburgh. He has both worked as a doctor in Nepal, and researched into health related issues as an anthropologist.

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XI - 26 July, 2004

John Whelpton
on
The State, Ethnic Diversity and the Development of National Identity: Comparisons between Nepal and the British Isles

______________________

(In comparison with Nepal's enormous cultural and linguistic diversity, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is often seen as highly homogenous. However, even leaving aside the complexities of the Irish dimension, this image is belied by the persistence of separate English, Scottish, Welsh national identities within the island of Great Britain, whilst these separate components themselves evolved out of an earlier, much more complex mix of ethnic groups and political units. In particular, the extensive replacement of Celtic dialects by the speech of Germanic settlers from the 5th century AD onwards is similar in some ways to the less complete, displacement of Tibeto-Burman languages by Khas Kura/Nepali in the Himalaya.

The talk will consider this basic parallel and the way in which the state in Britain and in Nepal sought to weld together originally distinct elements both by conquest and by drawing on common experience and cultural symbols. It will in addition discuss how more recent nationalist historiography in both countries has interpreted the historical record to serve contemporary political ends.)

John Whelpton has been teaching English in Hong Kong since 1987 and has continued writing on Nepalese history and politics. His major publications include: Kings,Soldiers andPriests: Nepalese Politics and the Rise of Jang Bahadur Rana, 1830-1857 (1991) ; Nationalism and Ethnicity in Hindu Kingdom: the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (edited with David Gellner and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka) (1997); People, Politics and Ideology: Democracy and Social Change in Nepal (with Martin Hoftun and William Raeper) (1999); and A History of Nepal, Cambridge University Press, due for publication in January 2005.

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X - 1 July, 2004

Mahendra Lawoti
on
Exclusionary Democratization in Nepal:
Political Institutions and Elite Attitudes in Comparative Perspective

______________________

Mahendra Lawoti is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University. He is joining Wake Forest University in Fall 2004. His book, Toward a Democratic Nepal: Inclusive Political Institutions for a Multicultural Society, is forthcoming from Sage Publications (New Delhi). He has published several articles and is revising his doctoral dissertation into a book. His teaching and research interests span democratization, political institutions, international development, violent conflicts, ethnic politics, constitutionalism, and social movements.

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IX - 27 May 2004

David Gellner
on
Rebuilding Buddhism:
Transnational Theravada Revivalism in Nepal
______________________

David Gellner is Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of South Asia at the University of Oxford. His doctoral research (1982-4) was on the traditional Vajrayana Buddhism of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley. He has since carried out fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley, broadening his interests to include politics and ethnicity and religious change, in particular the history and effects of the newly introduced Theravada Buddhist Movement. He is the author of The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes (OUP, 2001) and Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest (CUP, 1992), co-editor of Contested Hierarchies: A Collaborative Ethnography of Caste among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal (OUP, 1995), and of Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Harwood, 1997), and editor of Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences (Social Science Press, 2003).

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VIII - 15 April, 2004

Asghar Ali Engineer
on
Sufism in South Asia: A Meeting Point for Secularism

______________________

Asghar Ali Engineer is a well-known Indian scholar who is has published more than 40 books on Islam, problems of Muslims, rights of Muslim women, communal and ethnic problems in India and South Asia. He is the founder and chairman of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Bombay. He also edits the quarterly journal Indian Journal of Secularism.

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VII - 15 January, 2004

Judith Pettigrew
on
Women, Ideology and Agency in Nepal's Maoist Movement

______________________

Judith Pettigrew is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. She is currently working on a book on the impact of the Maoist insurgency on rural civilians.

(The lecture is based on a paper Judith co-wrote with Sara Shneiderman of Cornell University for presentation at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association in November 2003.)

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VI

Kathryn March
on
Thirty years of change
in a northwestern Tamang village

______________________

Kathryn March is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist/Gender/Sexuality Studies,
Cornell University.

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V - 22 August, 2003

Pratyoush Onta
on
Social Science Research Imagination
in Nepal: The Money Question
__________________________

Pratyoush Onta is associated with the Centre for Social Research and Development
and Martin Chautari, Kathmandu.

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IV - 12 August, 2003

Walter Kaelin
on
Power Sharing: Learning Lessons from Switzerland
________________________

Walter Kaelin is Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Bern, Switzerland. He was the chairman of the committee of experts that drafted the part on the judiciary for the new Swiss constitution* adopted in 1999.

Downloads a Power Point presentation (zipped)

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III - 1 August, 2003

Ramesh Dhungel
on
Opening the Chest of Nepal’s History:
The Survey of Brian Houghton Hodgson’s Manuscripts from the British Library
and Royal Asiatic Society
_____________________

Ramesh Dhungel, of the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University, is currently Research Fellow and Adjunct Faculty, Department of Languages and Cultures of South Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, working on the Hodgson Manuscripts Project.

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II - 9 January, 2003

Joe Heim
on
Political Culture, Political Participation and Political Leadership
_____________________

Joe Heim is Professor of Political Science and Director, Public Administration Program,
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

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I - 19 July, 2002

Michael Hutt
on
Bhutanese Refugees: Some Reflections on the Past and Present
_____________________

Michael Hutt is Reader in Nepali and Himalayan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author of the forthcoming
Unbecoming Citizens: Culture, Nationhood and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan (OUP).