Nepalis Inside and Outside Nepal, Volume 1

Situated in northern South Asia at the interface between different linguistic and cultural areas, Nepal contains huge ethnic, cultural, and socio-political diversity. At the same time, it has had to confront far-reaching social change in an ex­tremely compressed timescale.

This volume attempts to encompass these transformations and the resultant complexity through a series of in-depth case studies.

Part 1 focuses on Pokhara, an important urban hub in west Nepal, and deals with urbanization, evolving ethnic relations, and occupational shifts. Part 2, ‘Marriage, Kinship, and Transformation of Intimacy’, covers questions of gender, social relations, marriage, drug use, and coping with the Maoist insurgency, in various parts of the country. In Part 3, ‘Transnational Links’, different chapters cover Gurkha soldiers, tourist developments, migrant workers, and ethnic movements. Part 4 consists of one substantial chapter, 'Nepal as Viewed from the Indian Himalayas’, in which Gerald Berreman makes a series of direct comparisons between the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas.

This is first of the two volumes entitled Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia. The volumes bring together scholars from Japan, Nepal, India, Europe, and America in order to deepen our understanding of social change in the region, on the basis of fresh fieldwork reports and new analyses.