In anthropology of pharmaceuticals it is recognized that pharmaceutical products have life in themselves. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study conducted among 81 people involved in the life cycles of psychotropic drugs. Based on the "biographical approach" proposed by Van der Geest and colleagues the paper describes  people's perception on how psychotropic drugs take social and cultural meaning from their birth (production), life span (import, promotion, procurement, whole sell and retail marketing, transport, storage, prescription) to death (consumption or disposal). The findings suggest the psychotropic drugs in all these phases of life come across people with different norms and values in diverse socio-cultural and economic settings. Therefore, the perception of these people about psychotropic drug is important for health policy and planning. The major factors affecting supply…

In February 2015, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Nepal was founded to find out the truth about incidents of gross violation of human rights in the course of armed conflict and providing recommendation for legal actions in the country. It is marked as an official process of dealing with the past to consolidate the process of transitional justice. There is a national need to integrate the memories of the conflict to heal from human right violation and to work jointly towards attaining a sustainable peace. This process of healing and reconciliation can be complemented by providing favorable conditions for dialogue, healing and reconciliation in community. Reconciliation is a deep emotional and personal process which involves individuals and communities suffered directly and inflicted sufferings in armed conflicts. Usually, the precondition for…

Across Nepal, as in much of the world, language communities are shifting from speaking indigenous languages to speaking exclusively languages of wider communication. The Dhimal community, a small ethnic group in the eastern Tarai, is among those experiencing rapid recent language shift. While most Dhimal people over 20 years old speak Dhimal fluently (in addition to Nepali, some Hindi and English), today few children under age ten speak the language. The reasons for this change are familiar and understandable, including pressure to use Nepali and English at school, the impression that Dhimal is not only irrelevant but detrimental to attempts to gain foreign employment, and in-migration that has left Dhimals a small minority in their homeland. Language shift, while tied to these large processes, is also an interactional phenomenon. Drawing…

This paper examines the process of crafting institutions and socio-cultural changes triggered by [of] “community managed micro-hydro”. The micro-hydro development was started after the political changes of 1990 and with the establishment of alternative energy promotion center in 1996 in order to electrifying rural villages of Nepal. Since then, micro-hydro has been promoted in remote and isolated villages by the communities as a common property with support from government and non-government organization. Simultaneously, these villages have been experiencing social and cultural changes in daily life, as electricity links local people into the global cultural arena. This paper provides an insight into how micro-hydro as an external intervention contributes in the transformation of society and culture, intersecting with existing local institutions and socio-cultural characteristics (caste/ethnicity, gender, economic status and power relation)…

Theatre village, one of theatre houses in Kathmandu, organized playback theatre for a month after April Earthquake in 2015. The main purpose of the playback theatre was listening traumatic stories of earthquake victims, trauma healing through participatory engagement in the story and building collective among audience. Internationally practiced methodology of playback theatre was telling, participatory listening, performance and dialogue.  Few interested audience told own story of earthquake experience in front of conductor, performance artists, and audience then artists performed on the plot of the story. All of participants and artists sunk into the story and expressed empathy. The overarching questions guiding this study are: what are audience members' experiences of the post earthquake playback theatre performance?  How does post quake playback theatre help in the process of trauma healing and…

Nepal is often times portrayed as a territory that was “secluded” from the outside world, and was in “slumber” before 1951 when the Rana regime (1846-1951) fell down. This narrative however has not gone unchallenged—some have called it a “selective exclusion,” and others have shown it as part of the “globalized economy” already in the Rana era. By looking at both intellectual trajectory of an author based in Pokhara, and at the ideas ingrained in his book this paper argues that the Rana rulers, despite “controlling education” and “censuring publications,” were not able to block the global flow of ideas of equality and justice, and science. This paper further shows that the country (and even the local activists) was “wide awake” and was striving to be a “modern” one much…

The Pemakö is a Tibetan Buddhist sacred geography nestled in the eastern Himalayan syntaxis of the Namche Barwa Massif. This paper addresses the different relationships between the Pemakö’s Tibetan Buddhist religious heritage and its natural environment. Based on historical and current interactions between these two aspects of the region, the guiding research question of this article asks if and how they could inform the Pemakö’s future existence. Legends of the Indian guru Padmasambhava form the basis of the Pemakö’s religious culture. Tibetan Buddhist practitioners believe that his spiritual potency imbues the area’s natural settings and that this energy ensures swift enlightenment to anyone who ventures there (Dorjé, c. 1615–1672b, vv. 363–365). The Yarlung Tsangpo River cuts through the region in a sharp curvature known as the Big Bend. Water, mountains…

The academic discourses on Gorkhaland movement largely remain gendered as they failed to cultivate the ‘complex institutionalized gender relations’ that operates both at societal level and at the movement situations. They also failed to realize women as the major building forces of the Gorkhaland movement. The Gorkha Women were always visible as leaders, participants, opponents and supporters of the movement. Though they made remarkable contributions in the independent, trade union and Nepali language movement, their participation in the identity movement has been witnessed only after 1980s under the leadership of Gorkha National Liberation Front and Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha. The GNLF as well as GJMM encouraged them to come out of their private domain to participate in the movement which led the formation of the Gorkha National Women’s Organization (GNWO)…

It has been ten years since Nepal emerged from a decade-long internal armed conflict, during which at least 13,000 people were killed. Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2006, measures under the framework of transitional justice (TJ) have been implemented to redress human rights violations. Processes of TJ, which consist of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, seek to facilitate justice and reconciliation typically during a political transition from an authoritarian regime towards a liberal democratic future (Hinton 2010:2). While Hinton (2010) argues that “local justice,” or the ways in which justice is perceived, experienced, produced, and conceptualized on the ground, must be taken seriously if TJ is to be successful, existing research has emphasized how the conceptualization of the “local” during processes of TJ often reflects elite…

This paper analyzes shifts in the strategy of caste representation during the democratization movements of 1950s, 1990s, and 2000s in Nepal by focusing on the Khaḍgī caste who have been engaged in slaughtering, processing and trading of livestock as a caste-based role in Newar society. I will investigate how Khaḍgī formed their networks in the meat markets, and what kind of identity politics they engaged. I will describe the shifts in strategies in Khaḍgī’s caste representation by three periods, the first period (1951-1990), the second period (1990-2006), and the third period (since 2006). On the first period, Khaḍgī formed“samaj sudar sewa”with Deula, Kusule , Dhobi who were excluded from schools because of their ‘water-unacceptable’ status, and formed their own schools. Khaḍgī also engaged in ‘mandir pravash movement’, which intends to…