Anthropology and Sociology in Nepal: Cultures, Societies, Ecology and Development. (Book Review).

Ram B. Chhetri and Om P. Gurung, eds. 1999. Anthropology and Sociology in Nepal: Cultures, Societies, Ecology and Development. Kathmandu: SASON. 372pp. ISBN: 99933-301-1-6/99933-301-0-8 Rs 700/500.

This volume brings together 24 papers from a conference held in March 1997, the second national conference organized by SASON. Just over half of the papers are by Nepali scholars, the rest by `Videshis', as the editors call them. There are five sections in the book: (1) introduction, (2) studies on rituals and ethnic/caste identities, (3) demographic studies, (4) management of natural resources, and (5) medical anthropology and sociology.

Particularly valuable, in my opinion, are those papers that -- despite the restrictions of space inevitable when including so many authors in less than 400 pages -- present new data, rather than rehearsing a conceptual framework that might be used in future research. Gyanu Chhetri, for example, reports on a survey of 483 Dalit households (Kami, Sarki, and Damai) from five different districts, giving figures for education, landholding, and occupation. (Unfortunately, though the figures are broken down by caste, showing that Damai are worse off than the other two castes, they are not also broken down by district,) Similarly Susan Hangen discusses, the ideology of the Mongol National Organization (MNO), led by Gopal Gurung, which has strong support in Ilam and has a considerable number of VDC representatives there, She provides a fascinating glimpse of its `not Hindu' ideology, of the admissions of some MNO supporters that they had no idea they were Mongols until taught this by the MNO, and of the divisions, which remain in everyday life between different `Mongol' groups. (She does not address the question of how the MNO representatives, once elected, compromise wit others who do not share their views.) Hiroshi Ishii provides a detailed comparison of Newar, Parbatiya, and Maithil life-cycle rituals, the kind of systematic comparative work that is too infrequently attempted. Bhim P. Subedi outlines some interesting material on cultural attitudes to territorial mobility drawn from two villages in east Nepal, one Brahman-Chetri, the other Kiranti Shyam Thapa's paper on female age at marriageuses sophisticated analyses of the census data to show that even allowing for the differential effects of development, ethnicity has a significant effect on age at marriage. Average age at marriage in Mustang (at 23) is nearly 8 years higher than in several Tarai districts.

Some papers provide useful surveys of their field, such as Ganesh Gurung on the background to the proposed National Ethnographic Museum, Dilli Ram Dahal on the history of demographic anthropology in Nepal, RI Fisher and D.A. Gilmour on anthropologists' contribution to community forestry development programmes in Nepal, and Matra J. Levitt on culturally appropriate healthcare programmes. A further seven papers deal with aspects of the management of forests or other natural resources. Those by Ram Chhetri, Elvira Graner, and Om Gurung give valuable case studies of specific `user groups' and their varying experiences. A paper by Charla Britt documents one aspect of the emerging development bureaucracy, namely the Federation of Community Forest Users in Nepal (FECOFUN).

The section on medical anthropological issues contains a long and detailed fist of folk diagnoses and herbal treatments by Ritu Prasad Gartoulla. Unfortunately the source of the remedies (either geographically or socially) is not given, and the Nepali terms are not given either in Devanagari or with diacritics. There are also papers by Bipin K. Acharya on naturopathy and Marion Gibbon on health and illness concepts and how they might be studied in Nepal.

Overall the volume gives a good picture of the kino of anthropological and sociological work now being done in Nepal. The predominance of applied anthropology, among both foreign and Nepali contributions, is striking but not surprising. In the first paper of the collection the editors briefly survey the history of anthropology and sociology in Nepal, mentioning Dor Bahadur Bista and A.W. Macdonald but managing to omit reference to CNAS (Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies) (except in passing as the co-organizing institution of the 1992 conference held at the Vajra Hotel). I must mention a personal interest here, since CNAS (originally INAS) was set up following a report written in 1972 or thereabouts by my father, Ernest Gellner. The report had been commissioned by the British Council, which provided the funding for he early years. My father returned for a month in December 1975 to write a follow-up rep Report. As I had just finished secondary school, and had a year before starting at university, I accompanied him. I still remember visiting INAS, as it was then, meeting A.W. Macdonald (Chairman of the Sociology and Anthropology Committee) Dor Bahadur, Andy Manzardo (then a Fulbright scholar), and other American anthropologists (Doss Mabe, Harvey Blustain, David Holmberg). We undertook a small research trek accompanied by Naresh Gurung, at the time one of the first two students to do the MA by dissertation at INAS (the other was Drone P. Rajaure.) This was a formative experience for me. The point of these personal reminiscences is to recall the important early role CNAS had in encouraging the sociology and anthropology of Nepal, both by Nepalis and by Videshis.

There is a second point about the history of the two subjects in Nepal where it is also necessary to challenge the editors. They write, under the heading `Issues of Concern for the Future', "If we look at the studies published so far, we notice that most of them are on Tibeto-Burman populations. Other communities including those in the Tarai have received very little attention ... there has been so much debate on bahunbad today but the Chhetris and Bahuns are among the least understood groups of people" (p. 7). It has frequently been claimed that the Bahuns and Chetris are little studied compared to Tibeto-Burman language groups. This is completely untrue (it is true that the Tarai has received less attention than it should have, but even this is beginning to change). Some of the best-written, most exciting, and most-read anthropological works have been about Bahuns and Chains: I need only cite the works of Linda Stone, Lynn Bennett, Veronique Bouillier, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Marc Gaborieau, Pat Caplan, Mary Cameron Andras Hofer, and John Gray (as weft as the pioneering work of Furer-Haimendorf). It is a pity that many of these groundbreaking ethnographies are either out of print, unavailable in Kathmandu, or written in French and German. And it is unfortunate that Ph.Ds on Bahun-Chetris by Inge-Britt Krause, Harvey Blustain, Gabriel Campbell, Debbie Rutter, W.F. Winkler, and no doubt others I am not aware of, remain unpublished. It is simply not the case that foreigners have neglected to study Bahun-Chetri culture. Ironically one hears few complaints that they have neglected the Dalit communities, which is the one major group that is genuinely understudied.

These are important points, but minor in terms of the assessment of the book as a whole. Anthropology and Sociology of Nepal is a valuable record of SASON's conference, and will need to be consulted by any anthropologist or sociologist, foreign or Nepali, embarking on fieldwork in Nepal. It will, I hope, be the first of many future SASON volumes.