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- Convenors:
-
Barbara Gerke
(University of Vienna)
Sienna R. Craig (Dartmouth College)
Patricia Mundelius (University of Edinburgh)
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- Chair:
-
Patricia Mundelius
(University of Edinburgh)
- Discussants:
-
Theresia Hofer
(University of Bristol)
Geoff Childs (Washington University in St. Louis)
Swargajyoti Gohain (Ashoka University)
- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel invites interdisciplinary presentations on unwriting the Himalayas. We explore collaborative writing with local colleagues, challenges in co-authorship, and diverse backgrounds. Presenters discuss creative writing methods and ways to transcend conventional anthropological representations.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites interdisciplinary presentations to explore how we write about the Himalayas and how we can unwrite them. We seek to go beyond our individual research topics to reflect on the writing process itself. How do we narrate these topics, and what are the implications of the ways we write?
As our discipline and who constitutes it continues to transform through important efforts at decolonization, the terrain of scholarship and collaboration has necessarily shifted, including in the constitution of research partnerships that stretch from project design and fieldwork to generating publications. What are the challenges and opportunities in integrating Himalayan colleagues into writing projects, joining theirs, or reimagining novel pathways to co-production of knowledge? How does writing collaboration unfold when we come from different institutional backgrounds and intellectual traditions, as well as from distinct life paths, as we search for ways to co-create? Where do we find common ground? What is expressed and what remains unsaid in our texts? How do the politics of knowledge, academic constraints, and institutional barriers shape, limit, or stretch our writing across borders? Where might writing fail? What other forms of multimodal expression are beginning to flourish?
Furthermore, what kinds of knowledge emerges from our collaborative and individual processes of (un)writing and (co)producing? We encourage presenters to share innovative methods of creative ethnographic writing and new approaches to collaboration with Himalayan colleagues. Together, we aim to explore how we can find words to transcend conventional representations in Himalayan anthropology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
Indian government regulations are reshaping Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medical) education in Ladakh, requiring medical students and teachers to engage in academic writing for career advancement. Based on 2024 fieldwork and collaborative writing since, this paper reflects on challenges, co-authorship, and the move from traditional scholarship to academic writing within the Sowa Rigpa community in India.
Paper Abstract:
In late summer of 2024, Gerke was invited by several Sowa Rigpa medical practitioners (amchis) and their institutes in Ladakh, situated in the northwestern Himalayas, to give a presentation on an unexpected topic: “How to write academically.” Both Sowa Rigpa medical students and their qualified teachers voiced growing concerns regarding Government of India AYUSH regulations. These regulations now require them not only to practice medicine but also to engage in academic research, writing, and publishing—key prerequisites for career advancement, particularly through articles in peer-reviewed journals. This paper discusses how traditional Sowa Rigpa education in India is being reshaped by these regulatory demands, pushing practitioners toward scholarly writing and publishing. Gerke’s lecture on what authorship in Sowa Rigpa might entail, followed by long conversations, led to a collaborative writing relationship with Amchi Jigmet Lhazes, a Buddhist nun, trained Sowa Rigpa medical practitioner, and assistant professor of Sowa Rigpa at the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies (CIBS) in Choglamsar, south of Leh. In this presentation, we explore together the challenges of our co-produced writing efforts, reflecting on the methods of our collaboration and the complexities of navigating different styles of writing, thinking, language, and communication. The paper also addresses the difficulties amchis face in adapting to an academic mode of thought that has historically been absent from traditional Sowa Rigpa scholarship, but shapes the current trajectories of the politics of traditional medical knowledge in India.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper describes the creative process of creating a graphic narrative depicting roads in the Himalayas. The comics medium merges image and text, offering expressive possibilities and constraints that differ from expository prose. My experiments with this medium reveals tensions inherent in building minimalist depictions from many voices and views.
Paper Abstract:
Among multimodal ethnographic forms, the medium of comics (graphic narrative) offers unique opportunities and constraints. The comics medium combines images and text in collage-like page compositions that offer intriguing possibilities for expressing multivocality, point of view, place and space, and sensory, affective, and embodied experiences. The principles of “show, don’t tell” and “less is more” guide comic writing-drawing, underscoring the narrative impact of leaving things out. This paper describes alternative narrative and representational structures that I have considered while experimenting, as an amateur, with creating a research-based comics about road-building in the Nepal Himalayas. Relying on assistance from artists, the project also draws on the insights of researcher-collaborators in Nepal and internationally, who in turn rely on the insights of interlocutors in Nepal. The resulting tangle of voices, views, and creativity presents opportunities for telling a non-linear, cacophonous story that resists explanatory closure. It also presents challenges for establishing a coherent authorial voice. In laying bare my (over)thinking about how this story could be framed, told, and composed, I show how the very process of creating this type of work rests on coproduced ways of seeing and telling.
Paper Short Abstract:
This presentation will outline the process of creating the children’s book “Pema and the Stolen Statue from Dolpa” (2022) with and for communities in Dolpa, Nepal.
Paper Abstract:
This presentation will outline the process of creating the children’s book “Pema and the Stolen Statue from Dolpa” (2022) with and for communities in Dolpa, Nepal. It will highlight the challenges and opportunities of researching the trafficking of cultural resources, a very sensitive topic, and disseminating this research through creative outputs. Specifically, it will reflect on knowledge co-creation across cultures, languages, access, and other differentiating factors. The presentation will discuss the process of writing, translating, publishing and launching the children’s book, as well as the accompanying museum exhibition of four Dolpa artists (three of which displayed their work for the first time), while being grounded in reflections of the author’s positionality, and how this project impacted their understanding, methodologies, and research outputs.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper discusses the challenges faced by the applicants in co-authoring a book on the development of Limbu written culture in Sikkim. The Limbu are an Indigenous community from the Nepal-Sikkim borderlands. The paper examines the difficulties of navigating hierarchies inherent to this collaborative relation, such as West/East, man/woman, writing/data gathering, local/international publishers, politics/culture, and standardized English/Himalayan English. It explores how an East/West collaboration can be framed to ensure that all voices are equally articulated and represented.
Paper Abstract:
For the past six years, we have been co-authoring a book on the history of Limbu literature in Sikkim, focusing on the development of Limbu written culture. The Limbu is an Indigenous community whose homeland spans eastern Nepal and Sikkim. Khamdhak, a Limbu scholar, teacher, and writer, provides most of the information, drawing on decades of involvement in Limbu literary production, his connections with Limbu writers, and his multidisciplinary expertise. Vandenhelsken, an anthropologist studying Limbu cultural dynamics, contributes interviews with Limbu authors, organizes the material, structures the book, and revises the text.
While the emerging field of ‘collaborative’ ethnography reevaluates the relationships between anthropologists and the communities they study during fieldwork, this paper focuses on the less frequently discussed issues of co-authorship, and collaboration in an academic publication. The book is significant as the first international academic publication on Limbu literature. However, the collaboration presented challenges, particularly navigating hierarchies such as West/East, man/woman, writing/data gathering, local/international publishers, politics/culture, and standardized English/Himalayan English.
This paper will discuss these ‘hierarchies,’ addressing a central question: how can we simultaneously “seek[s] forms of praxis and inquiry that are emancipatory and empowering” (Denzin and Lincoln 2014), avoid reinforcing constructed dichotomies between Indigenous and Western knowledge and practices, without re-constructing essentialized notions of Indigeneity? We ultimately advocate for the importance of direct discussions and working in-person, which allowed us to prepare a book that we are both satisfied with.
Paper Short Abstract:
Emergent from a comparative and collaborative project on Himalayan elders’ experiences in an era of unprecedented migration, this paper explores possibilities – inclusive of but beyond ethnographic writing – for distilling and sharing what was learned through engaging a group of elders in a Buddhist pilgrimage as a method for learning about their lived experiences as well as their hopes and fears about growing old.
Paper Abstract:
This paper emerges from an ongoing, three-year comparative and collaborative research project being conducted in Nepal’s districts of Mustang (Lo and Baragaon) and Gorkha (Nubri, and Tsum) as well as in Kathmandu,and among diasporic communities from these regions living in greater New York City. Set against the reality that, in many places on this planet, we are getting older, and that global population aging is increasing in intensity while the structures human communities have relied upon for generations to care for the elderly are cracking and shifting, this project asks: How do individuals, families, communities, and institutions adapt to demographic and socioeconomic changes to allow people to age in a culturally appropriate manner? Taking seriously the understanding that engaging in Buddhist pilgrimage remains a component of what it means to age “successfully” and prepare for eventual death and rebirth in a Himalayan cultural context, we facilitated a week-long pilgrimage from Mustang to Kathmandu with a group of eight elders as an ethnographic method to learn about their life experiences as well as their hopes and fears about aging. At the same time, pilgrimage-as-method presented our research team with opportunities to embody an ethics of care grounded in Himalayan concepts of merit (sonam) and benefit (phentok). We also engaged in multimodal documentation practices that included conventional fieldnotes, still photography, videography, and semi-structured group interviews. This paper explores possibilities – inclusive of but beyond ethnographic writing – for distilling and sharing what was learned from this shared and embodied experience.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores the collective experiences of outsiders/insider researchers who balanced their well-being, ethics, curiosity and religious beliefs to negotiate access in the field while being considered ritually impure. Expanding an initial sample of six researchers involved in the BA-funded 'Dignity without Danger' project, the authors contacted over 60 female researchers who worked in Nepal over the past 50 years. Their anonymous contributions enable us to report on a wealth of experiences. The result is an account of female solidarity, working through pain and experiencing (dis)trust and discrimination. The choice of conforming or ignoring communal rules, of starting to believe or (not)disclosing one's status, of deciding to leave or lie creates a complex system of negotiating one's presence in the field as a menstruating researcher.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper evaluates how challenges in collaborative fieldwork and ethnographic writing on menstruation, such as failures or 'leakages', co-produce narratives on gendered experiences in Sankhu, Nepal.
Paper Abstract:
Ethnographic writing on menstruation, as a hidden subject, materialises through mistakes, absence and ambiguities. Fragmented ethnographic encounters with menstruation must be balanced with narratives from fieldwork participants who co-produce this knowledge. This paper reflects on the tensions, ambiguities and possibilities of engaging and articulating a hidden, gendered topic and its implications for ethnographic writing.
From January 2023 to 2024, I undertook ethnographic fieldwork on menstruation in Sankhu, an ancient Newar town in the Kathmandu Valley. Early collaboration with a research assistant from Kathmandu exposed differences in positionality, expectations and priorities with family obligations affecting her involvement. Our differing experiences as women undertaking fieldwork in Sankhu created insights into female propriety, authority and how women's voices are interpreted in ethnographic research. Fieldwork participants became active co-producers of knowledge, narrating as translators, interlocutors and knowledge disseminators while uncomfortable moments at collaborative workshops illustrated disconnects. My positionality, alongside how menstruation physically drew me into the field through pain, absence and 'leaks', generated findings of menstruation as shared responsibility.
This paper considers how challenges and obstacles in fieldwork and writing are generative moments in the co-production of knowledge. Where can failure, or 'leakages', in collaborative fieldwork and ethnographic writing be mobilised? How can a research subject like menstruation, intrinsically connected to experiences of women, be accurately represented while maintaining ethical imperatives of anonymity? Indirect writing techniques recounting sanitary waste disposal, awkwardness and absence offer creative ways to co-articulate daily life for women in Sankhu, with possibilities for co-producing narratives on hidden subjects in Nepal.
Paper Short Abstract:
This talk offers a meditation on the practice of coding and the writing of ethnography through a series of poems composed of fragments of codes from fieldnotes. Based on data generated from two years of research on disaster, mental health, and psychosomatic disorders in Nepal, each entry presents a code, such as “waiting” or “dreaming.” The aim of Codebook is to reflect on the process of ethnographic creation, and to explore the surprising and often surreal juxtapositions of fragments and observations prior to their explicit thematization and analysis.
Paper Abstract:
Ethnographic writing, one end point of anthropological research, is generated from a close analysis of data such as fieldnotes, interviews, and other supporting material. While different methods may be used, it is widely accepted that the practice of coding is central to ethnographic data analysis. Through coding, the marking of recurrent themes in the data, it becomes possible to find meaningful patterns and repetitions so that one can begin to compose an ethnographic argument. How do we generate these codes? How do we select the point from which analysis begins? This talk offers a meditation on the practice of coding and the writing of ethnography through a series of poems composed of fragments of codes from fieldnotes generated across 2 years of research on disaster, mental health, and psychosomatic disorders in Nepal. Each entry presents a code, such as “waiting” or “dreaming.” The aim of Codebook is to reflect on the process of ethnographic creation, and explore the surprising and often surreal juxtapositions of fragments and observations prior to their explicit thematization and analysis.