Book description:
“Recently anthropology has turned to accounts of persons-in-history/ history-in-persons, focusing on how individuals and groups as agents both fashion and are fashioned by social, political, and cultural discourses and practices… The diversity of peoples, recent political transformations, and nation-building efforts make Nepal an especially rich locale to examine people’s struggles to define and position themselves… [T]his collection offers a richly textured and complex accounting of the mutual constitution of selves and society”
My thoughts…
Why did I think this sounded interesting? This gaggle of anthropologists succeeded in obscuring all the intriguing things about human cultures, thus obfuscating this gentle reader. Still, there was some worthwhile stuff buried among the scholarly rubble: stuff about marriage rites, definitions of madness, body image, materialism, origins of caste, and honor. There was one writer whose essay I really enjoyed: Sherry B. Oliver, writing about the disappearance of shamanism in Sherpa society. Two Nepali words kept popping up throughout the book: radi, which means “widow” but is commonly used as an insult; and dukha: hardship.
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