Signing and Belonging in Nepal

by Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway

While many deaf organizations around the world have adopted an ethno-linguistic framing of deafness, the meanings and consequences of this perspective vary across cultural contexts, and relatively little scholarship exists that explores this framework from an anthropological perspective.
     In this book, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway presents an accessible examination of deafness in Nepal. As a linguistic anthropologist, she describes the emergence of Nepali Sign Language and deaf sociality in the social and historical context of Nepal during the last decades before the Hindu Kingdom became a secular republic. She then shows how the adoption of an ethno-linguistic model interacted with the ritual pollution model, or the prior notion that deafness results from bad karma. Her focus is on the impact of these competing and co-existing understandings of deafness on three signers who adopted deafness as an ethnic identity, homesigners whose ability to adopt that identity is hindered by their difficulties in acquiring Nepali Sign Language, and hearing Nepalis who interact with Deaf signers. Comparing these contexts demonstrates that both the ethno-linguistic model and the ritual pollution model, its seeming foil, draw on the same basic that both persons and larger social formations are mutually constituted through interaction. Signing and Belonging in Nepal is an ethnography that studies a rich and unique Deaf culture while also contributing to larger discussions about social reproduction and social change.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 2016

Reviews

[Subin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Singing and Belonging in Nepal presents the observations of the author Erika Hoffmann during her research on the deaf/Deaf community in Nepal. I rarely get chance to read a well-written book about Nepal so I savored this book, which I believe she converted from her research dissertation. Many of the instances in the book when the author mentions her cultural shocks were humorous and overall the book was Nostalgic to me since I've been living abroad for several years. However, it made me sad to be reminded that people with disability usually live lowly life due to lack of social safety net and entrenched social biases in Nepal, so my kudos to the author for trying to raise awareness on this topic.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about Nepal: By laying out the issues of deaf people she actually digs deep into the social structure of Nepal. She presents the social issues faced by deaf people which also exposes the discriminatory practices of Nepalese society based on several factors such as disability, ethnicity, language, religion and many others. Deaf people's struggle with religious dogma on "inter-cast" marriage, which severely limited their chance of finding the right spouse was also a painful reminder for myself. The views expressed in this book about the marginalization of ethnic and linguistic minorities will perhaps upset some Nepalese readers (no one likes to be told that they are beneficiary of such practices). The author is also sympathetic toward the movements of indigenous, none-Hindu, and Dalits for greater autonomy which will also dismay many Nepalese from upper strata of society.

[Rachael Durkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for my Principles of Sociocultural Anthropology class. Very interesting way of looking at and explaining the use of and access to language. A must-read for any Anthropology student, or anyone interested in linguistics.