Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:12:20.192Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inventing Social Categories Through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Stacy Leigh Pigg
Stacy Leigh Pigg*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Nepal is a predominantly rural nation: Most people live in villages and make their living as subsistence farmers. The Nepalese government, assisted by international donor agencies, administers projects directed at improving the conditions of life for these rural people. Images of villages and village life accompany the promotion of development ideals. Radio Nepal has actors playing the part of villagers in didactic skits aimed at convincing rural people that they should consult doctors for their health problems or should feed oral rehydration solution to children suffering from diarrhea. Schoolbooks contain illustrations of village scenes and talk about village life as they inform children about development programs. When development policy makers plan programs, they discuss what villagers do, how they react, and what they think. Together, these images coalesce into a typical, generic village, turning all the villages of rural Nepal into the village.

Type
Constructing Local Boundaries
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 491 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anagnost, Ann Stasia. 1988. “Family Violence and Magical Violence: The Woman as Victim in China's One-Child Family Policy.” Women and Language, 11:2, 16–22.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1988. “Putting Hierarchy in Its Place.” Cultural Anthropology, 3:1, 36–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun; and Carol, Breckenridge. 1988. “Editors' Comments.” Public Culture, 1:1, 1–4.Google Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1984. “The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies, 44:1, 101–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, Lionel. 1975. Administration and Politics in a Nepalese Town: The Study of a District Capital and its Environs. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Caro Baroja, Julio. 1963. “The City and the Country: Reflexions on Some Ancient Commonplaces,” in Mediterranean Countrymen: Essays in the Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean, Julian, Pitt-Rivers, ed., 27–40. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World—A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard S. 1968. “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society, Milton, Singer and Cohn, Bernard S., eds. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean; and John, Comaroff. 1988. “Through the Looking-Glass: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind.” Journal of Historical Sociology, 1:1, 6–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, Randall, Steven F., trans. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, Clive. 1972. “Images of the Village Community: A Study in Anglo-Indian Ideology.” Modern Asian Studies, 6:3, 291–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumont, Louis. 1966. “Images of the ‘Village Community‘ from Munro to Maine.”Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9:67–89.Google Scholar
Escobar, Arturo. 1988. “Power and Visibility: Development and the Invention and Management of the Third World.” Cultural Anthropology, 3:4, 428–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gaborieau, Marc. 1982. “Les rapports de classe dans l'ideologie officielle du Népal. Caste et Class en Asie du Sud.” Collection Purusartha, 6:251–90.Google Scholar
Gellner, David. 1986. “Language, Caste, Religion and Territory: Newar Identity Ancient and Modern.” European Journal of Sociology, 27:102–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C.; Ross, James L.; and Sidney, Schuler. 1983. “From a Mountain-Rural to a Plains-Urban Society: Implications of the 1981 Nepalese Census.” Mountain Research and Development, 3:1, 61–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Höfer, András. 1979. The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal: A Study of the Muluki Ain of 1854. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagnen.Google Scholar
Holmberg, David. 1989. Order in Paradox: Myth, Ritual, and Exchange Among Nepal's Tamang. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Justice, Judith. 1983. “The Invisible Worker: The Role of the Peon in Nepal's Health Service.” Social Science and Medicine, 17:14, 967–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Justice, Judith. 1986. Policies, Plans, and People: Culture and Health Development in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Levine, Nancy. 1987. “Caste, State, and Ethnic Boundaries in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies, 46:1, 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mani, Lata. 1987. “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India.” Cultural Critique, 7:119–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBean, George. 1984–1985. “Pale Punya Bahadur,” Durga Baral, illustra. Nawa Drishya, 1:2. Kathmandu: UNICEF.Google Scholar
Memmi, Albert. 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Mishra, Chaitanya; and Pitamber, Sharma. 1983. Foreign Aid and Social Structure: Notes on Intra-State Relationships. Proceedings of a Seminar, October 4–5, 1983. Kathmandu, Nepal: Integrated Development Systems, P.O. Box 2254.Google Scholar
Naridy, Ashis. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism.London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Naridy, Ashis. 1989. “Shamans, Savages and the Wilderness: On the Audibility of Dissent and the Future of Civilizations.” Alternatives, 14:263–77.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1987. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Pigg, Stacy Leigh. 1990. “Disenchanting Shamans: Representations of Modernity and the Transformation of Healing in Nepal.” Ph.D. disser., Department of Anthropology, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Pletsch, Carl E. 1981. “The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, circa 1950–75.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23:3, 565–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quigley, Declan. 1987. “Ethnicity Without Nationalism: The Newars of Nepal.” Arch. Eur. Sociol., 8:152–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regmi, Mahesh C. 1978. Thatched Huts and Stucco Palaces: Peasants and Landlords in 19th Century Nepal. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.Google Scholar
Shrestha, Nārāyanprasād. 1981 [V.S. 2038]. Hāmro Panchāyat ra Nāgarik Jiban. Grade 8. Sano Thimi, Bhaktapur: Janak Education Materials Centre, Ltd.Google Scholar
Stone, Linda. 1986. “Primary Health Care For Whom? Village Perspectives from Nepal.” Social Science and Medicine, 22:3, 293–302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
“Voices of Nepal” [Nepāli, Āwāj], videotape, n.d. Petaluma, Ca.: Paradigm Production.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar