Far Out Liechty, Mark
2017, 2017-02-21, Volume:
57734
eBook
Westerners have long imagined the Himalayas as the world's last untouched place and a repository of redemptive power and wisdom. Beatniks, hippie seekers, spiritual tourists, mountain ...climbers—diverse groups of people have traveled there over the years, searching for their own personal Shangri-La. In FarOut, Mark Liechty traces the Western fantasies that captured the imagination of tourists in the decades after World War II, asking how the idea of Nepal shaped the everyday cross-cultural interactions that it made possible.Emerging from centuries of political isolation but eager to engage the world, Nepalis struggled to make sense of the hordes of exotic, enthusiastic foreigners. They quickly embraced the phenomenon, however, and harnessed it to their own ends by building tourists' fantasies into their national image and crafting Nepal as a premier tourist destination. Liechty describes three distinct phases: the postwar era, when the country provided a Raj-like throwback experience for rich Americans; Nepal's emergence as an exotic outpost of hippie counterculture in the 1960s; and its rebranding into a hip adventure destination, which began in the 1970s and continues today. He shows how Western projections of Nepal as an isolated place inspired creative enterprises and, paradoxically, allowed locals to participate in the global economy. Based on twenty-five years of research, FarOut blends ethnographic analysis, a lifelong passion for Nepal, and a touch of humor to produce the first comprehensive history of what tourists looked for—and found—on the road to Kathmandu.
Sherpas Fisher, James F; Fisher, James F
1990., 19900401, 1990, 1990-05-01, 19900101
eBook
James Fisher combines the strengths of technical anthropology, literary memoir, and striking photography in this telling study of rapid social change in Himalayan Nepal. The author first visited the ...Sherpas of Nepal when he accompanied Sir Edmund Hilary on the Himalayan Schoolhouse Expedition of 1964. Returning to the Everest region several times during the 1970s and 1980s, he discovered that the construction of the schools had far less impact than one of the by-products of their building: a short-take-off-and-landing airstrip. By reducing the time it took to travel between Kathmandu and the Everest region from a hike of several days to a 45-minute flight, the airstrip made a rapid increase in tourism possible. Beginning with his impressions of Sherpa society in pre-tourist days, Fisher traces the trajectory of contemporary Sherpa society reeling under the impact of modern education and mass tourism, and assesses the Sherpa's concerns for their future and how they believe these problems should be and eventually will be resolved.
Nepal in Transition Einsiedel, Sebastian von; Malone, David M; Pradhan, Suman
03/2012
eBook
Since emerging in 2006 from a ten-year Maoist insurgency, the 'People's War', Nepal has struggled with the difficult transition from war to peace, from autocracy to democracy, and from an ...exclusionary and centralized state to a more inclusive and federal one. The present volume, drawing on both international and Nepali scholars and leading practitioners, analyzes the context, dynamics and key players shaping Nepal's ongoing peace process. While the peace process is largely domestically driven, it has been accompanied by wide-ranging international involvement, including initiatives in peacemaking by NGOs, the United Nations and India, which, throughout the process, wielded considerable political influence; significant investments by international donors; and the deployment of a Security Council-mandated UN field mission. This book shines a light on the limits, opportunities and challenges of international efforts to assist Nepal in its quest for peace and stability and offers valuable lessons for similar endeavors elsewhere.
The number of manuscripts produced in the Indian sub-continent is astounding and is the result of a massive enterprise. The visual organization of texts in North Indian and Nepalese manuscripts from ...800 to 1300 CE is at the centre of the present study. It sheds light on both the ways of manuscripts production and the employment of the manuscripts in ritual contexts in different areas of India and Nepal.
This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Nepal contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries ...on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Nepal.
In this pathbreaking and timely work, Hamal Gurung gives voice to the growingnumber of Nepali women who migrate to the United States to work in the informaleconomy. Highlighting the experiences of ...thirty-five women, mostly collegeeducated and middle class, who take on domestic service and unskilled laborjobs, Hamal Gurung challenges conventional portraits of Third World womenas victims forced into low-wage employment. Instead, she sheds light on Nepaliwomen's strategic decisions to accept downwardly mobile positions in order toearn more income, thereby achieving greater agency in their home countries aswell as in their diasporic communities in the United States. These women are notonly investing in themselves and their families-they are building transnationalcommunities through formal participation in NGOs and informal networks ofmigrant workers. In great detail, Hamal Gurung documents Nepali migrantwomen's lives, making visible the profound and far-reaching effects of theircivic, economic, and political engagement.
In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, leaving the People's Republic of China with a crisis on its Tibetan frontier. Sulmaan Wasif Khan tells the story of the PRC's response to that crisis and, in doing ...so, brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters: Chinese diplomats appalled by sky burials, Guomindang spies working with Tibetans in Nepal, traders carrying salt across the Himalayas, and Tibetan Muslims rioting in Lhasa.What Chinese policymakers confronted in Tibet, Khan argues, was not a "third world" but a "fourth world" problem: Beijing was dealing with peoples whose ways were defined by statelessness. As it sought to tighten control over the restive borderlands, Mao's China moved from a lighter hand to a harder, heavier imperial structure. That change triggered long-lasting shifts in Chinese foreign policy. Moving from capital cities to far-flung mountain villages, from top diplomats to nomads crossing disputed boundaries in search of pasture, this book shows Cold War China as it has never been seen before and reveals the deep influence of the Tibetan crisis on the political fabric of present-day China.
Effectively combining ethnographic research and theoretical reflections on the pursuit of the good life in a Tibetan community in the Nepal Himalaya, this fascinating book offers a fresh perspective ...in seeking to understand contemporary experience of development and globalization.
