Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:51:31.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some scholarly and political considerations across time and space*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Sara Shneiderman
Sara Shneiderman
Affiliation:
St Catharine’s College, Cambridge CB2 1RL, UK E-mail: sbs31@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the applicability of the Zomia concept for social scientific studies of the Himalayan region, with a focus on the Central Himalayas. While for both empirical and political reasons the term Zomia itself may not be entirely appropriate to the Himalayan Massif, the analytical imperatives that underlie James C. Scott’s usage of it – particularly the emphasis on the ethnic, national, and religious fluidity of highland communities, and their intentionality and agency vis-à-vis the states with which they engage – can be of great utility to those working in the Himalayan region. Through a historical review of the area tradition of ‘Himalayan studies’, as well as an ethnographic sketch of the cross-border Thangmi community of Nepal, India, and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, I argue that the potential power of the Zomia concept hinges on its ability to provide an additional framework for analysis (and perhaps political struggle), that adds value to, rather than replaces, ‘traditional’ nation-state rubrics.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 289 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Willem van Schendel, ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: jumping scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, 6, 2002, pp. 647–68.

2 James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

3 Jean Michaud, Historical dictionary of the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006.

4 See Erik de Maaker and Vibha Joshi, ‘The northeast and beyond: region and culture’, South Asia, 30, 3, 2007, pp. 381–90; Stuart Blackburn, Himalayan tribal tales: oral tradition and culture in the Apatani Valley, Leiden: Brill, 2008; Michael Oppitz, Thomas Kaiser, Alban von Stockhausen and Marion Wettstein, eds., Naga identities: changing local cultures in the northeast of India, Gent: Snoeck Publishers, 2008.

5 See Ramachandra Guha, The unquiet woods: ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001 (first published 1989); Ravina Aggarwal, Beyond lines of control: performance and politics on the disputed borders of Ladakh, India, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004; Martijn van Beek and Fernanda Pirie, eds., Modern Ladakh: anthropological perspectives on continuity and change, Leiden: Brill, 2008.

6 See Jean Michaud’s editorial in this issue (pp. 187–214) for maps and further discussion of the relationships between these areas and Zomia.

7 Richard Fardon, ‘Localizing strategies: the regionalization of ethnographic accounts’, in Richard Fardon, ed., Localizing strategies: regional traditions of ethnographic writing, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1990, pp. 1–35.

8 David M. Waterhouse, ed., The origins of Himalayan studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820–1858, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.

9 Gerald Berreman, ‘Cultural variability and drift in the Himalayan hills’, American Anthropologist, 62, 1960, pp. 774–94; Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, ‘Caste in the multi-ethnic society of Nepal’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4, 1960, pp. 12–32; Chie Nakane, ‘A plural society in Sikkim: a study of the interrelations of Lepchas, Bhutias and Nepalis’, in Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, ed., Caste and kin in India, Nepal and Ceylon, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966; Nancy Levine, ‘Caste, state, and ethnic boundaries in Nepal’, Journal of Asian Studies, 46, 1, 1987, pp. 71–88.

10 Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan traders: life in highland Nepal, London: John Murray, 1975; James Fisher, Trans-Himalayan traders: economy, society, and culture in northwest Nepal, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.

11 David Snellgrove, Himalayan pilgrimage: a study of Tibetan religion, Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1961; Gerald Berreman, ‘Shamans and Brahmins in Pahari religion’, Journal of Asian Studies, 23, 1964, pp. 53–69; Alexander Macdonald, Essays on the ethnology of Nepal and South Asia, Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1975.

12 Brian Hodgson, Essays on the languages, literature and religion of Nepal and Tibet, London: Trubner and Company, 1874; George Grierson, ed., Linguistic Survey of India, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1909.

13 Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin, ‘Revisiting ethnography, recognizing a forgotten people: the Thangmi of Nepal and India’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 11, 1, 2006, pp. 97–181; Sara Shneiderman ‘Rituals of ethnicity: migration, mixture, and the making of Thangmi identity across Himalayan borders’, PhD thesis, Cornell University, 2009; Sara Shneiderman, ‘Ethnic (p)reservations: comparing Thangmi ethnic activism in Nepal and India’, in David Gellner, ed., Ethnic activism and civil society in South Asia, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2009, pp. 115–41.

14 Scott, Art, p. 19.

15 Ibid., p. 11.

16 Van Schendel, ‘Geographies’, p. 654, n. 14.

17 Scott, Art, p. 45.

18 Stuart Blackburn, ‘Oral stories and culture areas: from northeast India to southwest China’, South Asia, 30, 3, 2007, pp. 423–4.

19 Geoffrey Samuel, ‘Tibet and the Southeast Asian highlands’, in Geoffrey Samuel, ed., Tantric revisionings: new understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian religion, London: Ashgate, 2005, p. 199.

20 George van Driem, Languages of the Himalayas: an ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region, Leiden: Brill, 2001, vol. 1, p. ix.

21 ICIMOD, ‘Hindu Kush-Himalayan region’, 2009, http://www.icimod.org/?page=43 (consulted 14 March 2010).

22 See Mark Turin, ‘Rethinking Tibeto-Burman: linguistic identities and classifications in the Himalayan periphery’, in P. Christiaan Klieger, ed., Tibetan borderlands, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 35–48.

23 Sylvain Lévi, Le Nepal: étude historique d’un royaume hindou, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1905, vol. 1, p. 28. See also Theodore Riccardi, ‘Sylvain Lévi: the history of Nepal, part I’, Kailash, 3, 1, 1975, pp. 5–60; and Andras Höfer, ‘What we social scientists owe to Sylvain Lévi’, Kailash, 7, 3–4, 1979, pp. 175–90.

24 As cited in Donald Lopez, ‘Foreigner at the lama’s feet’, in Donald Lopez, ed., Curators of the Buddha: the study of Buddhism under colonialism, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 262.

25 See Lopez, Curators, and idem, Prisoners of Shangri La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998; Peter Bishop, Dreams of power: Tibetan Buddhism and the Western imagination, London: Athlone Press, 1993; Thierry Dodin and Heinz Rather, eds., Imagining Tibet: perceptions, projections, and fantasies, Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2001.

26 Mary Des Chene, ‘Is Nepal in South Asia? The condition of non-postcoloniality’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 12, 2, 2007, pp. 212.

27 Stuart Blackburn, ‘Colonial contact in the “hidden land”: oral history among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 20, 3, 2003, pp. 335–65; Martin Sökefeld, ‘From colonialism to postcolonial colonialism: changing modes of domination in the northern areas of Pakistan’, Journal of Asian Studies, 64, 4, 2005, pp. 939–73.

28 Des Chene, ‘Is Nepal in South Asia?’, p. 212.

29 Carole McGranahan, ‘Empire out-of-bounds: Tibet in the era of decolonization’, in Ann Laura Stoler, Peter Perdue, and Carole McGranahan, eds., Imperial formations, Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2007, p. 173.

30 Peter Hansen, ‘Why is there no subaltern studies for Tibet?’, Tibet Journal, 28, 4, 2003, pp. 7–22.

31 Scott, Art, p. 33.

32 Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, The Sherpas of Nepal: Buddhist highlanders, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1964; Bernard Pignède, The Gurungs: a Himalayan population of Nepal, Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1993 (first published 1966); John Hitchcock, The Magars of Banyan Hill, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

33 Pratyoush Onta, ‘Whatever happened to the “golden age”?’, Himal, 6, 4, 1993, p. 30.

34 Ibid., p. 30. Exceptions are Ludwig Stiller, The rise of the house of Gorkha: a study in the unification of Nepal, 1768–1816, New Delhi: Manjusri Publishing House, 1973; Adrian Sever, Nepal under the Ranas, New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Company, 1993; John Whelpton, A history of Nepal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

35 See Rhoderick Chalmers, ‘“We Nepalis”: language, literature and the formation of a Nepali public sphere in India, 1914–1940’, PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003.

36 Melvyn C. Goldstein, ‘Introduction’, in Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein, eds., Buddhism in contemporary Tibet: religious revival and cultural identity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, p. 4.

37 Tsering Shakya, ‘Introduction: the development of modern Tibetan Studies’, in Robert Barnett, ed., Resistance and reform in Tibet, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 9.

38 Lopez, Curators.

39 George Dreyfus ‘Proto-nationalism in Tibet’, in Per Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan Studies: proceedings of the sixth seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 1992, pp. 205–19.

40 Stan Mumford, Himalayan dialogue: Tibetan lamas and Gurung shamans in Nepal, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, p. ix.

41 Nick Allen, Review of Sherry Ortner’s High religion: a cultural and political history of Sherpa Buddhism, in American Anthropologist, 94, 4, 1992, pp. 967–8. See also Ortner’s response, American Anthropologist, 95, 3, 1993, p. 726.

42 Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, ‘Foreword’, in James Fisher, ed., Himalayan anthropology: the Indo-Tibetan interface, Paris: Mouton, 1978, pp. ix–xii.

43 James Fisher, ‘Introduction’, in Fisher, Himalayan anthropology, p. 1.

44 Ibid., p. 2.

45 Samuel, ‘Tibet’, p. 198.

46 Bernard Cohn, ‘History and anthropology: the state of play’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22, 2, 1980, 204.

47 Des Chene, ‘Is Nepal in South Asia?’, p. 219.

48 Charles Ramble, The navel of the demoness: Tibetan Buddhism and civil religion in highland Nepal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, ch. 5.

49 Michael Hutt, Unbecoming citizens: culture, nationhood, and the flight of refugees from Bhutan, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

50 Des Chene, ‘Is Nepal in South Asia?’, p. 210.

51 Mahesh Chandra Regmi, Landownership in Nepal, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976; Thatched huts and stucco palaces, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978. The Regmi Research Series is online at http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/journals/regmi/ (consulted 14 March 2010). Prayag Raj Sharma, The state and society of Nepal: historical foundations and contemporary trends, Kathmandu: Himal Books, 2004.

52 Andras Höfer, The caste hierarchy and the state in Nepal: a study of the Muluki Ain of 1854, Kathmandu: Himal Books, 2004 (first published 1979); Richard Burghart, ‘The formation of the concept of nation-state in Nepal’, Journal of Asian Studies, 44, 1, 1984, pp. 101–25; Levine, ‘Caste’; David Holmberg, Order in paradox: myth, ritual, and exchange among Nepal’s Tamang, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989; David Gellner, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, and John Whelpton, eds., Nationalism and ethnicity in a Hindu kingdom: the politics of culture in contemporary Nepal, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997; William Fisher, Fluid boundaries: forming and transforming identity in Nepal, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; Arjun Guneratne, Many tongues, one people: the making of Tharu identity in Nepal, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002; Genevieve Lakier, ‘The myth of the state is real: notes on the study of the state in Nepal’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 10, 1, 2005, pp. 135–70.

53 Melvyn C. Goldstein, A history of modern Tibet, 1913–1951: the demise of the Lamaist state, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989; Tsering Shakya, Dragon in the land of snows: a history of modern Tibet since 1947, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999; Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the making of modern China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005; Martin Mills, Identity, ritual and state in Tibetan Buddhism: the foundations of authority in Gelukpa monasticism, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.

54 Saul Mullard, ‘Opening the hidden land: state formation and the construction of Sikkimese history’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2009.

55 Hutt, Unbecoming citizens; Christian Schicklgruber and Françoise Pommaret, eds., Bhutan: mountain-fortress of the gods, London: Serindia, 1997; Richard Whitecross, ‘Separation of religion and law? Buddhism, secularism and the constitution of Bhutan’, Buffalo Law Review, 55, 2, 2007, pp. 707–11.

56 David Gellner, ‘Introduction: transformations of the Nepalese state’, in David Gellner, ed., Resistance and the state: Nepalese experiences, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2002, p. 5, emphasis in original.

57 Ernestine McHugh, ‘From margin to center: “Tibet” as a feature of Gurung identity’, in P. Christiaan Klieger, ed., Tibetan Borderlands, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 115–26.

58 Chalmers, ‘We Nepalis’; McGranahan, ‘Empire out-of-bounds’.

59 Des Chene, ‘Is Nepal in South Asia?’, p. 219.

60 See Whelpton, History.

61 See Kumar Pradhan, The Gorkha conquests, Kathmandu: Himal Books, 2009 (first published 1991).

62 Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan societies, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993, p. 148; Toni Huber, The cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: popular pilgrimage and visionary landscape in southeast Tibet, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 4.

63 Françoise Pommaret, ‘The Mon-pa revisited: in search of Mon’, in Toni Huber, ed., Sacred spaces and powerful places in Tibetan culture, Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1999, p. 53. See also Sara Shneiderman, ‘Barbarians at the border and civilising projects: analysing ethnic and national identities in the Tibetan context’, in Klieger, Tibetan borderlands, pp. 9–34.

64 Sherry Ortner, ‘Introduction’, in Sherry Ortner, ed., The fate of ‘culture’: Geertz and beyond, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999, p. 9.

65 Mark Turin, ‘Newar-Thangmi lexical correspondences and the linguistic classification of Thangmi’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 68, 2004, pp. 97–120.

66 Dhanavajra Vajracarya and Tek Bahadur Shrestha, Dolakhako aitihasik ruprekha (A historical review of Dolakha), Kathmandu: Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies, 2031 VS (1974–75 CE); Casper Miller, Faith-healers in the Himalayas, New Delhi: Book Faith India, 1997 (first published 1979); Mary Shepherd Slusser, Nepal mandala: a cultural study of the Kathmandu Valley, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.

67 Slusser, Nepal mandala, p. 55.

68 Lynn Bennett and Dilip Parajuli, Nepal inclusion index: methodology, first round findings and implications for action, Kathmandu: World Bank, 2008.

69 Regmi Research Series, Cumulative index for 1981, pp. 12–13.

70 Ibid., p. 15.

71 See Tanka Subba, Dynamics of a hill society: the Nepalis in Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalayas, New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1989; Piya Chatterjee, A time for tea: women, labor and post/colonial politics on an Indian plantation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.

72 W. B. Northey and C. J. Morris, The Gurkhas: their manners, customs and country, London: J. Lane, 1928, p. 260.

73 Dane Kennedy, The magic mountains: hill stations and the British Raj, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1996, p. 184.

74 George Grierson, Linguistic survey of India (volume I), Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1927, p. 280.

75 Sara Shneiderman, ‘Circular lives: histories and economies of the transnational Thangmi village’, in Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka and Gérard Toffin, eds., The politics of belonging in the Himalayas: local attachments and boundary dynamics, New Delhi: Sage Publications, forthcoming.

76 Scott, Art, p. 174.

77 Charles Taylor, C, Multiculturalism and ‘the politics of recognition’: an essay, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

78 Arjun Appadurai, ‘The capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition’, in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, eds., Culture and public action, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 59–84.

79 Shneiderman, ‘Rituals’.

80 See Höfer, Caste hierarchy.

81 See Tanka Subba, Ethnicity, state, and development: a case study of the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling, New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1992.

82 See Shneiderman, ‘Ethnic (p)reservations’; and Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin, ‘Seeking the tribe: ethno-politics in Darjeeling and Sikkim’, Himal Southasian, 19, 2, 2006, pp. 54–8.

83 See Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman, ‘Reservations, federalism and the politics of recognition in Nepal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 43, 19, 2008, pp. 39–45.

84 Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing history from the nation: questioning narratives of modern China, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

85 Donald Moore, ‘The crucible of cultural politics: reworking development in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands’, American Ethnologist, 26, 3, 2000, 654–89.

86 See Pitamber Sharma and Narendra Khanal, Towards a federal Nepal: an assessment of proposed models, Kathmandu: Social Science Baha, 2009.

87 Van Schendel, ‘Geographies’, p. 657.