Description
Book SynopsisRituals 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 discou
Trade Review
"Theoretically informed (but never pompous), attractively and clearly written (but not overwritten), ethnographically grounded (but never boring), multi-sited and boundary-crossing, politically aware, engaged, and reflexive, Sara Shneiderman's ethnographic monograph makes a significant, indeed brilliant, intervention in Himalayan anthropology, one that is (or ought to be) just as relevant for specialists of India as it is for scholars of Nepal." * David Gellner, in Pacific Affairs *
"An entirely unique and stunning ethnography. Shneiderman finds herself assisting the Thangmi's drive to manifest their distinctiveness and seek recognition. She manages a high-wire performance herself: one full of compassion, acute theoretical insight, exemplary balance, and respect for the sacredness of the quest-doing as much credit to ethnography as a craft as to the Thangmi as a people. Few have been as fortunate in their ethnographer as the Thangmi." * James C. Scott, Yale University *
"Brilliant and original, Rituals of Ethnicity traces how identity, ethnicity, and indigeneity are constructed by members of a marginalized group within different state structures. Arguing for the importance of often self-conscious rituals for mobilizing and objectifying ethnicity, Shneiderman shows how anthropology too can be marshaled for this project, recasting ethnography as a variety of ritualized performance." * Kirin Narayan, Australian National University *
Table of Contents
List of 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 Migration, Circular Economies of 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
