How are we to assess the changes Nepal has seen in recent decades? Can we explain changes over time in terms of historical development, as a rational series of objective changes? Why does thinking in terms of rupture and continuity rapidly lead to a frustrating dead end? How should we include in our analysis the different scales of space and time involved in the changes as we perceive them? Anne de Sales found that these questions were being asked with increasing acuity during her visits, over the course of thirty years, to the heart of the Maoist insurgency in Western Nepal.
Dr de Sales will begin her lecture by discussing the methodological difficulties involved in identifying ongoing changes. She will argue that if objective changes do exist, the inherently subjective dimension of the notion of change, pervasive in discourse since the 1950s, and its eminently ideological character in a revolutionary period, merely multiply the points of view. However, all include some perceptions of time and in the second part of her lecture she will describe the different time scales at work within a Magar community that was declared the capital of Nepali Maoism, and show how these various understandings are part of the community’s identity and provide the motivation for its actions. Finally, she will analyze a particular event that exemplifies the pitfalls of identity the villagers have to negotiate in order to be agents in the political transformation of their nation: a Maoist leader’s invocation of the local god Braha at the conclusion of a speech. She will argue that this should be understood not just as a contradiction, or even as a cynical flourish for the benefit of gullible villagers, but as evidence for the coexistence of past and present in people’s everyday experience of being-in-time.
Anne de Sales holds the position of Chercheur at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in association with the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre. Her doctoral research focused on the shamanic tradition of the Kham-Magar of Northwestern Nepal and resulted in a monograph entitled Je suis né de vos jeux de tambours (Nanterre, Société d'ethnologie, 1991). Her recent work concerns the social and cultural impact of the Maoist uprising in rural Nepal, with special attention to local narratives. She is also co-editor with Robert Parkin of Out of the Study and into the Field: Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology (Berghahn Books 2010).