Katharine Rankin and I recently participated in a two day workshop in Copenhagen Denmark at Aarhus University entitled Social and political transformation in Nepal: ethnographic perspectives on state- citizen relations. The workshop was organized by Uma Pradhan and Karen Valentin who are both based at the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University. The purpose of the workshop was to collaboratively reflect on different ethnographic perspectives of the state in Nepal, specifically through the lens of the “relational spaces” of state-citizen encounters. Katharine presented a paper entitled Corruption, road building and the politics of social science research in post-conflict Nepal that was co-authored with IOD project members Tulasi Sigdel, Pushpa Hamal and myself. I also presented a paper building on my dissertation work in Jumla, entitled Farmers, Civil Servants and “Inclusive Business” Engineers: Making agricultural markets in Jumla, Nepal. The workshop was a wonderful opportunity to meet and engage with a number of scholars based at Aarhus University currently working in Nepal in a focused and productive space. The papers covered a range of topics from education and mobility, to informal settlements and urban greening. Across these different “faces” of the Nepali state, we were able to identify key convergences and tensions, bringing us to reflections about the geographies of the state and shared questions about where the state begins and ends. We are looking forward to future collaborations and publication plans.
Elsie Lewison
Department of Geography and Planning
University of Toronto
