Nepal's Ongoing Political Transformation: A review of post-2006 literature on conflict, the state, identities, and environments

Abstract

This review article provides a reading guide to scholarly literature published in English about Nepal's political transformation since 2006, when Nepal's decade-long civil conflict between Maoist and state forces formally ended. The article is structured around four major themes: (1) the Maoist insurgency or ‘People's War’; (2) state formation and transformation; (3) identity politics; and (4) territorial and ecological consciousness. We also address the dynamics of migration and mobility in relation to all of these themes. Ultimately, we consider the Maoist movement as one element in a much broader process of transformation, which with the benefit of hindsight we can situate in relation to several other contemporaneous trajectories, including: democratization, identity-based mobilization, constitutional nationalism, international intervention, territorial restructuring, migration and the remittance economy, and the emergence of ecological and other new forms of consciousness. By looking across the disciplines at scholarship published on all of these themes, we aim to connect the dots between long-standing disciplinary traditions of scholarship on Nepal and more recent approaches to understanding the country's transformation.

Harmony in transformation: A comparative study of communist -Led social sector progress in two local governments of Makwanpur, Nepal

“…Two years later, Mahendra promulgated a new constitution, which ushered into existence Nepal's 'panchayat democracy'. (Whelpton, 2005;Shneiderman et al, 2016).…”

DIFFERENTIATED CITIZENSHIP: The Everyday Politics of the Urban Poor in Kathmandu, Nepal

“…1 1For an overview of the range of literature examining Nepal's ongoing political transformation in the post‐conflict era, see Shneiderman et al . (2016). For more on the intersection of identity and exclusions, see Bennett (2006).…”