Jun
25
2007
Book description… “This book is a brief but thorough introduction to folklore from South Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The volume begins with an overview of the cultural background of South Asia, and examines different types of folklore and the difficulties of defining and classifying folklore genres. It then [...]
Jun
24
2007
Book description: “Recently anthropology has turned to accounts of persons-in-history/ history-in-persons, focusing on how individuals and groups as agents both fashion and are fashioned by social, political, and cultural discourses and practices… The diversity of peoples, recent political transformations, and nation-building efforts make Nepal an especially rich locale to examine people’s struggles to define and [...]
Jun
23
2007
A Photographic Record by John Claude White, 1883-1908. (July 2006) My thoughts… White was a British-Indian civil servant who lived in Nepal from 1883–4, one of only five Westerners allowed into the country that year. His sepia photos include the usual stunning mountain shots, along with a few Kathmandu scenes I’ll get to see in [...]