Death of the Gatekeeping Concepts

In anthropological studies, certain people and places become associated with particular themes of research. The best example of such gatekeeping concepts is perhaps that of caste in India. Such concepts might be useful at some level of anthropological practice but ultimately they stunt the growth of both the discipline, and our understanding of the world, For foreign scholars and lay people, gatekeeping concepts conceal a people's culture as if their lives were mere museum exhibits. For natives scholars and non-scholars, literature based on gatekeeping concepts make for boring reading. From the anthropology of Nepal, two examples might prove the paint.

First, the Thakalis, who were described for almost two decades in the anthropology of Nepal as the best example of "tribes" that have sanskritised, From Shigeru Iijima to Furer-Haimendorf to Dor Bahadur Bista, the theme was how the Thakalis had stopped wearing Tibetan clothes, prohibited the eating of yak meat and abandoned their Tibetan names for Sanskrit ones (see box: The Making of Nepali Anthropologists). It took Andrew Manzardo, in 1978 to point out that the Thakalis were expert public relations managers. This small and wealthy sector `it the population were "skillful manipulators of images and identities" who had no qualms about modifying -culture" to suit political ends, in this case for their upward social mobility. Similarly, it took Bill Fisher, in 1987, to say how the Thakali identity involved an intricate convergence of historical dynamics — of' the Nepali state and the Thak Khola region– and a conscious politicisation of their ethnicity, As he put it, you don't find yak meat in a Thak Khola village, just wait until you teach the next village.

The second questions the vast literature on the Kathmandu valley which, until recently, gave the impression that only Newars live there and, moreover, they are concerned only with their festivals arid caste status, This held true even for the CNAS/Sydney conference where no less than six papers on the anthropology of Kathmandu were based on field work among the Newars. But, as in research on the Thakalis, winds of change are approaching, Recent research by Nepali and foreign scholars on how Kathmandu participates in the consumption and production of media, how the tourist industry connects with ethnic art, and how its middle-class residents are hypocrites when it comes to "democracy" are healthy indications of the emerging anthropology of Kathmandu's complexity.