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More than an ethnography, this book clarifies one of the most important current debates in anthropology: How should anthropologists regard culture, history, and the power process?
Since the 1980s, the Thakali of Nepal have searched for an identity and a clarification of their "true" culture and history in the wake of their rise to political power and achievement of economic success. Although united in this search, the Thakali are divided as to the answers that have been proposed: the "Hinduization" of religious practices, the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, the revival of practices associated with the Thakali shamans, and secularization.
Ironically, the attempts by the Thakali to define their identity reveal that to return to tradition they must first re-create it -- but this process of re-creation establishes it in a way in which it has never existed. To return to "tradition" -- to become Thakali again -- is, in a way, to become Thakali for the very first time.
List of contents
List of Maps and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Works Cited
Index
1. Introduction: Thakali Again for the Very First Time
Meeting at the Crossroads
Searching for Culture in the Past
2. Drawing Lines: On Constructing and Contesting Boundaries
Imagining Thakali
3. Forging Histories
Borderlands
4. Separation and Integration: Community and Contestation
Tourists in Their Own Land
5. Ritual Landscapes
Reclaiming Culture
6. Codifying Culture
Agency/Action/Practice
7. Constructing Thakali
Fluid Boundaries
8. Beyond Sanskritization
The Terms of Boundary Disputes
9. Old Artificers in a New Smithy
Thak Khola
The Term Thakali
Contesting Boundaries
Membership and Status, Groups and Categories
Among the Thaksatsae Thakali: Ties That Bind, Lines That Divide
Cutting Across Descent
Khuwale and Thak Khole
Historical Narrative(s)
Thakali Narratives of the Past
Scholarship and the Reconstruction of the Past
The Formation of the Gurkhali State
The Effects of Nation Building
Post--Salt Monopoly Adaptations
Enter the Anthropologists, Surmising
Moving On
Samaj
Integration and Solidarity/Competition and Cooperation
Politics
Eclectic Ritual Pluralism
"We Don't Have Any Gods''
Ancestor Rituals: Lha Chuji
Weddings: Khimi Tapne
Torongla
Subclan Rites: Khimi Ramden
Subclan Rites: Jho Khane
Lha Phewa and Thakali Clans
Migration and Descent Group Rituals
Codification and Contestation
Forming a National Samaj
Mortuary Rites
Institutionalizing Contestation
A New Social Order
Codified Culture
Initial Responses to the Formation of the Thakali Sewa Samiti
The Integration of the Khuwale
Nationally Drawn Boundaries Locally Imposed
Ongoing Changes
First Contacts, First Constructs
Revisionist Constructions
Thakali Reconstructed
Narijhowa
Speaking of Thakali
On Boundaries
On Boundary Making
Beyond Sanskritization
Summary: Criss-crossing Boundaries
Dhikur: Rotating Credit
About the author
William F. Fisher
Summary
Examining the relationship between societal practice, historical processes, and culture in a Nepali society, this book tells the story of the Thakali's search for identity and their efforts to clarify and represent their culture and history.
