TY  - BOOK
AU  - Shneiderman,Sara
TI  - Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India 
T2  - Contemporary Ethnography
SN  - 9780812246834
U1  - 305.80095496 23
PY  - 2015///]
CY  - Philadelphia : 
PB  - University of Pennsylvania Press, 
KW  - Emigration and immigration
KW  - Political aspects
KW  - Himalaya Mountains Region
KW  - Ethnicity
KW  - Thami (South Asian people)
KW  - Ethnic identity
KW  - Government relations
KW  - India, Northeastern
KW  - Nepal
KW  - Migrations
KW  - Tribes
KW  - Government policy
KW  - Folklore
KW  - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Anthropology
KW  - Linguistics
N1  - 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; Issued also in print
N2  - 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
UR  - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291001
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812291001
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9780812291001.jpg
ER  -