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Born
to be a Butcher? A Study of Social Mobility and Symbolic Struggles of
Low Castes in the Kathmandu Valley - [Abstract] From
Castes to Ethnic Group? Modernisation and Forms of Social Identification
among the Tharus of the Nepalese Tarai AnthroBase can now present two richly detailed, booklength monographs on the caste-system in two different areas of Nepal in the 1990's. Both were written by Norwegian graduate students in anthropology - at the universities of Bergen (Lie) and Oslo (Ødegaard), and based on intensive anthropological fieldwork (Lie for eight months, Ødegaard for nineteen). Ødegaard's study from the Tarai lowlands focuses on myth and local political reform movements among low-caste groups. Her thesis is that castes, in the present-day situation, are being transformed into ethnic groups, with all the political consequences that this entails. Lie has a similar interest in social change and social mobility, but pays particular attention to symbolic conflict, which is explored through an analysis of local organization, kinship and identity. Both books include voluminous photographic documentation. |
 
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The
Fourth Nordic Conference on the Anthropology of Post-Socialism: This is the first conference published on AnthroBase. The collection includes two keynote lectures, and some twenty to thirty workshop papers presented by conference participants. The keynote lectures are Irmina Matonyte's (Vytatutas Magnus University, Kaunas) quantatively based study of changing value orientations among the new elites in Lithunia, and Vintila Mihailescu's (University of Buchurest) semiotic essay on ethnic food and nationalism in the Balkans. The workshop papers - presented by mostly junior researchers from East / Central Europe and the Scandinavian countries - treat topics ranging from journalism to religion, from nationalism to economics, and span most of the post-socialist region - from Serbia, via Hungary and Estonia, through Russia to Altai. The papers are interesting, not only as empirical documentation and analysis of the variety of conditions reigning in the post-socialist region, but also as witnesses to the development of qualitative social science in and about the formerly Soviet-dominated area. AnthroBase also has a rich collection of other material on East / Central Europe. Click here to see titles. |
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