Regionalism, mobility, and “the village” as a set of social relations: Himalayan reflections on a South Asian theme

Abstract

This article considers how ethnographic representations of ''the village'' have created links between otherwise disparate ''regional ethnography traditions'' over time. ''The village'' has served as a multivalent sign that at once works to integrate specific locales into broader scholarly narratives, and to index moments of disjuncture in the production of regionality. I make this argument with specific reference to the relationship between ''Himalayan'' and ''South Asian'' studies, as mediated by the village as both geographical and social sign. I draw upon ethnographic material from three different Himalayan contexts to illustrate how people think of the village as a set of social relations, within which they orient themselves subjectively regardless of their physical location. Such orientations can be either positive or negative, demonstrating that the village serves not only as a site of nostalgia for those who have left it, but rather as an organizing principle that may possess a range of emotional and pragmatic valences. Ultimately, I argue that today's villages remain key sites for the production of social meaning, requiring deep anthropological engagement if we wish to understand how contemporary mobile lives themselves mediate between the universal and the particular.

The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa

“…It locates key questions about the proliferation and transformation of Tibetan medicine on the margins of so-called high Tibetan culture, grounding these inquiries specifically at the village level within the context of the Indian Union. In doing so, this book complements Theresia Hofer's (2018) subaltern account of Tibetan medicine in rural Tsang (Tibet Autonomous Region, China) and explic itly follows Sara Shneiderman (2015) in taking the village as a key site for the production of social meaning, negotiations of social change, and the mediation between the universal and the par tic u lar. It also responds to Ester Gallo's (2015) and Michael Herzfeld's (2015) calls for focusing on villages as integral parts of larger multisited research agendas.…”

Introduction. THE INDIAN FACE OF SOWA RIGPA

“…It locates key questions about the proliferation and transformation of Tibetan medicine on the margins of so-called 'high' Tibetan culture, grounding these inquiries specifically at the village level within the context of the Indian Union. In doing so, this book complements Theresia Hofer's (2018) subaltern account of Tibetan medicine in rural Tsang (Tibetan Autonomous Region, China), and explicitly follows Sara Shneiderman (2015) in taking the village as a key site for the production of social meaning, negotiations of social change, and the mediation between the universal and particular. It also responds to Ester Gallo (2015) and Michael Herzfeld's (2015) calls for focusing on villages as integral parts of larger multi-sited research agendas.…”

Tibetan Wine Production, Taste of Place, and Regional Niche Identitiesin Shangri-La, China

“…The former presents a geopolitical reality of highly controlled border crossing, while the latter subjects borderland communities to the reconstruction of their livelihoods, making them increasingly dependent upon the statecorporate development agenda and the fluctuation of market demands locally and globally. Third, the studies of ethnic and national identities in the region have discernibly shifted toward the territorial and environmental affect of given human societies rooted in their culturally coherent ancestral homelands but are currently fragmented into the frontiers and borderlands of different modern nation-states (Shneiderman 2015a;Smyer Yü 2014). Forth, trans-Himalayan or Himalayan studies are becoming ever more publicly engaged and geared toward policy implications in the global arenas of climate change, transboundary hydraulic politics, preservation of cultural and linguistic heritages, border disputes, humanitarian discourses, and conflict resolution (Drew 2014b andHorstmann 2014;Cederlöf and Sivaramakrishnan 2014).…”