Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in

Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal
- Used Book in Good Condition
The Tharu of lowland Nepal are a group of culturally and linguistically diverse people who, only a few generations ago, would not have acknowledged each other as belonging to the same ethnic group. Today the Tharu are actively redefining themselves as a single ethnic group in Nepal's multiethnic polity. In Many Tongues, One People, Arjun Guneratne argues that shared cultural symbolsâ€•including religion, language, and common myths of descentâ€•are not a necessary condition for the existence of a shared sense of peoplehood. The many diverse and distinct socio-cultural groups sharing the name "Tharu" have been brought together, Guneratne asserts, by a common relationship to the state and a shared experience of dispossession and exploitation that transcends their cultural differences. Tharu identity, the author shows, has developed in opposition to the activities of a modernizing, centralizing state and through interaction with other ethnic groups that have immigrated to the Tarai region where the Tharu live.This book"s claims have wide implications for the study of ethnic identity and are applicable far beyond Nepal. The emergence of the category of Native American, for example, may be considered an analogous case because that ethnic identity, like the Tharu, subsumes people of different cultural origin, and has been defined both through the state and against it.
Country USA
Brand Cornell University Press
Manufacturer Cornell University Press
Binding Paperback
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780801487286
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	Cornell University Press
Manufacturer	Cornell University Press
Binding	Paperback
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780801487286
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal

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