Brokering justice: global indigenous rights and struggles over hydropower in Nepal

This article explores the dynamics of brokerage at the intersection between the justice conceptions enshrined in global norms and the notions of justice asserted in specific socio-environmental struggles. Using the case of a small hydropower project in Nepal, we trace the attempts of an indigenous activist to enrol villagers in his campaign against the background of villagers’ everyday negotiations with the hydropower company. The study shows how global norms, such as indigenous peoples’ rights, may fail to gain traction on the ground or even become sources of injustice in particular contexts

Timescapes of Himalayan hydropower: promises, project life cycles, and precarities

In this paper, we review the existing social science scholarship focused on hydropower development in the Himalayan region, using an interpretive lens attuned to issues of time and temporality. While the spatial politics of Himalayan hydropower are well examined in the literature, an explicit examination of temporal politics is lacking. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework organized around the heuristic of timescapes, highlighting temporal themes implicit in the existing literature. In three sections, we explore the temporal politics of anticipation that shape hydropower dreams, the intersecting temporalities and rhythms that modulate the life cycles of hydropower projects, and the ways that geological and hydrological time affect both hydropower development and broader Himalayan futures. Along the way, we pose a series of questions useful for framing future research given the significant climatic, geophysical, and sociopolitical changes underway in the Himalayan bioregion, calling for greater analytical attention to time, temporality, and temporal ethics in future studies of hydropower in the Himalayas and beyond.Austin Lord, Georgina Drew, Mabel Denzin Gerga

New Nepal, New Ethnicities: Changes since the mid-1990s

Pfaff-Czarnecka J. New Nepal, New Ethnicities: Changes since the mid-1990s. In: Pfaff-Czarnecka J, Gellner D, Whelpton J, eds. Nationalism and Ethnicity in Nepal. Kathmandu: Vajra Publishers; 2008: I-XXXIII

Vestiges and Visions: Cultural Change in the Process of Nation-Building in Nepal

Pfaff-Czarnecka J. Vestiges and Visions: Cultural Change in the Process of Nation-Building in Nepal. In: Pfaff-Czarnecka J, Gellner D, Whelpton J, eds. Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu State: The Cultural Politics in Contemporary Nepal. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers; 1997: 419-470

On the Margins of World Society: Working with Impoverished, Excluded and Marginalised People

For experienced and inexperienced researchers and practitioners alike, this engaging book opens up new perspectives on conducting fieldwork in the Global South

Complex Communities in Nepal-Himalaya, or: Solidarity as a Way of Life and as a Global Category

Pfaff-Czarnecka J. Complex Communities in Nepal-Himalaya, or: Solidarity as a Way of Life and as a Global Category. In: Pratap RT, Baaden J, eds. Nepal - Myths & Realities - In Commemoration of the 75th birthday of Dr. Wolf Donner. Zweitveröffentlichung. New Delhi: Book Faith India; 2000: 457-477

Nationalism and Ethnicity in Nepal

Gellner D, Pfaff-Czarnecka J, Whelpton J, eds. Nationalism and Ethnicity in Nepal. Kathmandu: Vajra Publ.; 2008