Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences

by David N. Gellner (Editor)

There has been growing concern about "failed states" around the world, and since the massacre of the Royal family in Nepal in 2001 increasing media attention has focused on the decline of the state and the rise of the Maoist rebels in this Himalayan kingdom where so many Westerners have taken trekking vacations. Development was always going to be a problem in Nepal, but few predicted the precipitous collapse of the state in rural areas in the face of the Maoist insurgency beginning in 1996 due, to a large extent, to the failure of the state to deliver promised development and benefits; instead, it became more and more authoritarian, even oppressive. Exploring the complex relationship between a modernizing, developmentalist state and the people it professes to represent, these fascinating and readable accounts of ordinary people&rsquos lives depict the various contexts out of which the Maoist insurgency grew. David Gellner is Lecturer in the Anthropology of South Asia, University of Oxford. He is the author of Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest (1992) and The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes (2001), and the co-author (with Sarah LeVine) of Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal (2005).

368 pages, Library Binding

First published February 20, 2007