CURRENTLY SOLD OUT

Fluid Boundaries: Forming and Transforming Identity in Nepal by William Fisher (Paperback, 2001)

Best-selling in School Textbooks & Study Guides

Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Best-selling in School Textbooks & Study Guides

Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Save on School Textbooks & Study Guides

More than an ethgraphy, this book clarifies one of the most important current debates in anthropology: How should anthropologists regard culture, history, and the power process? Since the 1980s, the Thakali of Nepal have searched for an identity and a clarification of their true culture and history in the wake of their rise to political power and achievement of ecomic success. Although united in this search, the Thakali are divided as to the answers that have been proposed: the Hinduization of religious practices, the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, the revival of practices associated with the Thakali shamans, and secularization. Ironically, the attempts by the Thakali to define their identity reveal that to return to tradition they must first re-create it - but this process of re-creation establishes it in a way in which it has never existed. To return to tradition - to become Thakali again - is, in a way, to become Thakali for the very first time.

Place of Publication
NY
Author Biography
William F. Fisher Is Associate Professor of Anthropology AT Harvard University.
Date of Publication
03/12/2001
Imprint
Columbia University Press
Genre
Social Sciences: Textbooks & Study Guides
Country of Publication
United States