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Rituals of Ethnicity : Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India / Sara Shneiderman.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Contemporary EthnographyPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: 1 online resource (328 p.) : 22 illusContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812246834
  • 9780812291001
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305.80095496 23
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Of Rocks and Rivers-Being Both at Once -- Chapter 2. Framing, Practicing, and Performing Ethnicity -- Chapter 3. Origin Myths and Myths of Originality -- Chapter 4. Circular Economies of Migration, Belonging, and Citizenship -- Chapter 5. Developing Associations of Ethnicity and Class -- Chapter 6. Transcendent Territory, Portable Deities, and the Problem of Indigeneity -- Chapter 7. The Work of Life-Cycle Rituals and the Power of Parallel Descent -- Chapter 8. Resisting the End of a Ritual -- Epilogue. Thami ke ho?-What Is Thami? -- Glossary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones of Nepal, India, and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Shneiderman offers a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities today despite the increasing realities of mobile, hybrid lives. She shows that ethnicization may be understood as a process of ritualization, which brings people together around the shared sacred object of identity.The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, Rituals of Ethnicity is framed by the Maoist-state civil conflict in Nepal and the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India. The histories of individual nation-states in this geopolitical hotspot-as well as the cross-border flows of people and ideas between them-reveal the far-reaching and mutually entangled discourses of democracy, communism, development, and indigeneity that have transformed the region over the past half century. Attentive to the competing claims of diverse members of the Thangmi community, from shamans to political activists, Shneiderman shows how Thangmi ethnic identity is produced collaboratively by individuals through ritual actions embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts. She builds upon the specificity of Thangmi experiences to tell a larger story about the complexities of ethnic consciousness: the challenges of belonging and citizenship under conditions of mobility, the desire to both lay claim to and remain apart from the civil society of multiple states, and the paradox of self-identification as a group with cultural traditions in need of both preservation and development. Through deep engagement with a diverse, cross-border community that yearns to be understood as a distinctive, coherent whole, Rituals of Ethnicity presents an argument for the continued value of locally situated ethnography in a multisited world.Cover art: Lost Culture Can Not Be Reborn, painting by Mahendra Thami, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812291001

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Of Rocks and Rivers-Being Both at Once -- Chapter 2. Framing, Practicing, and Performing Ethnicity -- Chapter 3. Origin Myths and Myths of Originality -- Chapter 4. Circular Economies of Migration, Belonging, and Citizenship -- Chapter 5. Developing Associations of Ethnicity and Class -- Chapter 6. Transcendent Territory, Portable Deities, and the Problem of Indigeneity -- Chapter 7. The Work of Life-Cycle Rituals and the Power of Parallel Descent -- Chapter 8. Resisting the End of a Ritual -- Epilogue. Thami ke ho?-What Is Thami? -- Glossary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones of Nepal, India, and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Shneiderman offers a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities today despite the increasing realities of mobile, hybrid lives. She shows that ethnicization may be understood as a process of ritualization, which brings people together around the shared sacred object of identity.The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, Rituals of Ethnicity is framed by the Maoist-state civil conflict in Nepal and the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India. The histories of individual nation-states in this geopolitical hotspot-as well as the cross-border flows of people and ideas between them-reveal the far-reaching and mutually entangled discourses of democracy, communism, development, and indigeneity that have transformed the region over the past half century. Attentive to the competing claims of diverse members of the Thangmi community, from shamans to political activists, Shneiderman shows how Thangmi ethnic identity is produced collaboratively by individuals through ritual actions embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts. She builds upon the specificity of Thangmi experiences to tell a larger story about the complexities of ethnic consciousness: the challenges of belonging and citizenship under conditions of mobility, the desire to both lay claim to and remain apart from the civil society of multiple states, and the paradox of self-identification as a group with cultural traditions in need of both preservation and development. Through deep engagement with a diverse, cross-border community that yearns to be understood as a distinctive, coherent whole, Rituals of Ethnicity presents an argument for the continued value of locally situated ethnography in a multisited world.Cover art: Lost Culture Can Not Be Reborn, painting by Mahendra Thami, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)