Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
226
result(s) for
"Gellner, David N"
Sort by:
Masters of hybridity: how activists reconstructed Nepali society
This article discusses the changes that activists have brought to Nepali society in relation to two key elements of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT): (1) its account of modernity and (2) its radical downplaying of human agency. ANT, contrary to the way it tends to be understood, deserves to be seen, at least in Latour's treatment, as a major theory of modernity. As such, it is important and enlightening, even though its attack on human agency - at least when discussing activism - is unhelpful. On this point Ian Hacking's notion of 'making up people' provides a better guide. The main example explored is the new kinds of ethnic identity that have achieved state recognition and become politically influential in Nepal over the last thirty years. The case of one ethnic and religious activist, Dr Keshabman Shakya, is used to illustrate the argument. Based on notions of human rights, rather similar processes of 'making up people' have also occurred with other minority groups, most strikingly in the case of the 'third gender', a context in which Nepal is famously 'progressive' compared to other nation-states in the region. Cet article discute des changements que des activistes ont apportés à la société népalaise en relation avec deux éléments de la théorie de l'acteur-réseau (ANT) de Bruno Latour : (1) son récit de la modernité et (2) sa minimisation radicale de l'agencéité humaine. Contrairement à ce que l'on en comprend habituellement, l'ANT mérite d'être considérée comme une théorie majeure de la modernité, du moins dans le traitement qu'en fait Latour. Sous cet angle, elle est importante et éclairante bien que son attaque sur l'agencéité humaine ne soit pas utile, du moins lorsqu'il est question d'activisme : dans ce cas, la notion de « façonner les gens » (making up people) de Ian Hacking fournit un meilleur guide. Sont ici principalement explorées les nouvelles sortes d'identité ethnique qui ont obtenu la reconnaissance de l'État et gagné une influence politique au Népal au cours des trente dernières années. Le cas de l'activiste ethnique et religieux Keshabman Shakya illustre cet argument. Basés sur des principes de droits humains, des processus assez similaires de façonnement des gens se sont aussi produits dans d'autres groupes minoritaires, le cas le plus frappant étant celui du « troisième genre », à propos duquel le Népal est notoirement « progressiste » par rapport aux autres États-nations de la région.
Journal Article
Sheldon Pollock and Max Weber: Why Pollock is more Weberian than he thinks
Sheldon Pollock is the leading North American Indologist and his magnum opus, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, is a field-defining classic. Pollock takes himself to be a fierce critic of Max Weber, but in fact his comparative historical approach shares much with Weber, and where it is wanting Pollock's text would have benefited from more, not less, Weberian influence. Pollock's vision of language history and his views on religion and legitimation are considered in detail.
Journal Article
New Identity Politics and the 2012 Collapse of Nepal's Constituent Assembly: When the dominant becomes ‘other’
This article explores the politicization of ethnicity in Nepal since 1990. In particular it looks at how ideas of indigeneity have become increasingly powerful, leading to Nepal becoming the first and—to date—only Asian country to have signed International Labour Organization Convention number 169 (hereafter ILO 169). The rise of ethnic politics, and in particular the reactive rise of a new kind of ethnicity on the part of the ‘dominant’ groups—Bahuns (Brahmans) and Chhetris (Kshatriyas)—is the key to understanding why the first Constituent Assembly in Nepal ran out of time and collapsed at the end of May 2012. This collapse occurred after four years and four extensions of time, despite historic and unprecedentedly inclusive elections in April 2008 and a successful peace process that put an end to a ten-year civil war.
Journal Article
Morality is fundamentally an evolved solution to problems of social co‐operation
This debate took place at the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) conference in Oxford on 21 September 2018, following the model of the Group Debates in Anthropological Theory at the University of Manchester (GDAT). It brought together and into confrontation two of anthropology's relatively new sub‐fields (new at least in their current incarnations), namely evolutionary anthropology and the anthropology of morality and/or ethics. Although organized by a social anthropology professional body, the conference organizers – in line with the wishes of the ASA committee at the time of the call for conference proposals (in 2016) – sought to encourage participation from all forms of anthropology, including archaeology. It was therefore fitting that the debate should pose a question that is of interest across the broad spectrum of anthropology and well beyond, highlighting, we hoped, the venerable anthropological ambition to contribute to the resolution of long‐standing and intractable philosophical questions.The proposition, ‘morality is fundamentally an evolved solution to problems of social co‐operation’, encapsulates a theory developed by Oliver Scott Curry, along with colleagues attached to the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA) and (since 2019) the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion (CSSC) within the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (SAME) in Oxford. This theory, known as ‘morality as co‐operation’ or MAC, seeks to explain morality in a systematic cross‐cultural manner by means of controlled and operationalized comparison (Curry 2016; Curry, Mullins & Whitehouse 2019). It seemed appropriate to ask Oliver to propose the motion and to select his own seconder. As prospective chair of the debate, I approached colleagues who might be interested in opposing the motion from the perspective of the new anthropology of morality, and the idea of the debate began to take shape.1
Journal Article
Afterword
In reflecting on the contributions to this collection, the afterword outlines three ways of understanding violence—direct physical force, structural violence and cultural or symbolic violence—and relates these to Steven Lukes’ three faces of power. It revisits Weber’s definition of the modern state as claiming a monopoly of the legitimate use of the first kind of violence, and contrasts that with the ways in which the actual practice of South Asian politics implies or requires violence. The example of state and non-state violence in Nepal in 2015 is used to illustrate these themes. This example brings out, as several contributions do, the importance of borders as violence-provoking sites of state sensitivity.
Journal Article
Afterword
ABSTRACTThis afterword considers the history of the subfield of the anthropology of Buddhism in light of the essays in this special section of Religion and Society. Anthropologists have sought to combat conventional assumptions about Buddhism and have long made contributions to the study of Buddhism, the state, nationalism, and politics. As part of a maturing field, they have also made contributions through the study of Buddhism to many other subfields of anthropology, including morality, spirit possession, the emotions, and materiality. It is no longer necessary for the anthropology of Buddhism to be overwhelmingly concerned with the authenticity and identity of its subjects.
Journal Article
Category and Practice as Two Aspects of Religion: The Case of Nepalis in Britain
This article suggests that religion is best understood as comprising at least two features of human life: category and practice. Religious category and religious practice may or may not overlap in a given population's religious identification or ascription, but such a differentiation is highly significant and should be made in the social, political, and cognitive study of religion. Three examples are offered whereby religious category and religious practice need to be distinguished in order to understand the ethnographic data. Rather than seeing religion as an undifferentiated or singular phenomenon classified by type, category and practice should be considered fundamental elements of religiosity that are both connected to and distinct from one another. The cases are drawn from Nepalis in the UK: The example of Nepali religion, in Nepal and in the diaspora, forms a complex set of categories and practices that testify to their distinctiveness and to their interaction.
Journal Article
The Emergence of Conversion in a Hindu-Buddhist Polytropy: The Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, c. 1600–1995
The practice of conversion—changing from one religion to another—is certainly not a modern invention, but it takes on a new and sometimes threatening significance in a modern context characterized by censuses, elections with universal suffrage, and majority rule. In the modern world separate religions have come to be defined, like ethnic groups or nations (Barth 1969), by the boundaries between them. One can only be a refugee if one flees across an international boundary; likewise, conventionally, religious change is only labeled “conversion” if it occurs across a boundary. Thus, as boundaries have become sharper between ‘religions,' so the issue of conversion has grown in political significance.
Journal Article
Masters of Hybridity: How Activists Reshaped Nepali Society,Masters of hybridity: how activists reconstructed Nepali society
This article discusses the changes that activists have brought to Nepali society in relation to two key elements of Bruno Latour's actor‐network theory (ANT): (1) its account of modernity and (2) its radical downplaying of human agency. ANT, contrary to the way it tends to be understood, deserves to be seen, at least in Latour's treatment, as a major theory of modernity. As such, it is important and enlightening, even though its attack on human agency – at least when discussing activism – is unhelpful. On this point Ian Hacking's notion of ‘making up people’ provides a better guide. The main example explored is the new kinds of ethnic identity that have achieved state recognition and become politically influential in Nepal over the last thirty years. The case of one ethnic and religious activist, Dr Keshabman Shakya, is used to illustrate the argument. Based on notions of human rights, rather similar processes of ‘making up people’ have also occurred with other minority groups, most strikingly in the case of the ‘third gender’, a context in which Nepal is famously ‘progressive’ compared to other nation‐states in the region.
Journal Article