TRANSFIGURATION OF THE POLITICAL: NEPALI STUDENT ACTIVISM AND THE POLITICS OF ACCULTURATION by Amanda Therese Snellinger This thesis/dissertation document has been electronically approved by the following individuals: Holmberg,David Hines (Chairperson) Riles,Annelise (Minor Member) Miyazaki,Hirokazu (Minor Member) March,Kathryn S (Field Appointed Member Exam) TRANSFIGURATION OF THE POLITICAL: NEPALI STUDENT ACTIVISM AND THE POLITICS OF ACCULTURATION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Amanda Thérèse Snellinger August 2010 © 2010 Amanda Thérèse Snellinger TRANSFIGURATION OF THE POLITICAL: NEPALI STUDENT ACTIVISM AND THE POLITICS OF ACCULTURATION Amanda Thérèse Snellinger, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2010 This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation into the process of political socialization as a means to understand Nepali political culture. It focuses on the activities of Nepali student organizations as sister organizations to the Nepali political parties. It is within the student organizations that individuals receive both their social training and ideological indoctrination into Nepali party politics. Moreover, student activism in Nepal has played a central role in how national politics unfolds. Politics at the university level has had a powerful impact on statewide politics and social change through the mobilization of the masses, the entrenchment of political party ideology, and the production of career politicians. Therefore, just as the student organizations’ politics are the gateway into Nepali mainstream politics, analysis of their practices and political attitudes can provide a view into more pervasive conceptions and processes in the larger political landscape. In this dissertation I conceive of the student organizations as a mini-public that provides a view on how political culture plays out in general forums. This dissertation is the culmination of a five-year research project during which I observed Nepali student activists become national politicians. I tracked the process whereby university students become involved in national political life by emphasizing emergent needs while simultaneously becoming socialized into the politics that they are trying to change. Students continue to be at the fore of making radical political demands, standing on the political ground gained by the generations before them. Analysis of the experience of political activism as it changes across generations has served as an effective tool to track less easily delineated political and cultural change. Furthermore, focusing on interaction between activists of different generations allows me to understand how people personally orient themselves in the political field. A culturally focused study of Nepali politics is particularly relevant in the current context while Nepal remains on the radar of international monitoring groups. This dissertation analyzes how Nepali student actors’ discursively negotiate international political values into their repertoire. I argue that the ways in which universal principles are reconciled with local, cultural values elucidates how these activists perceive international democratic values’ place in their own local context. My analysis focuses on how Nepali political actors interpretations’ of global democratic norms are calculated with the recognition that they are speaking to a larger audience beyond Nepali citizens. The manner in which they do this is intended to insert themselves and their politics into a larger scope. This is an interpretative process that highlights both the local and the global and an interaction between them. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Amanda Thérèse Snellinger was born in Middletown, NY, 1977. She is the third daughter of seven children born to John and Mary Snellinger. With support from an EEC four-year scholarship she completed her BA at Bard College in 1999, with dual major in Anthropology and Religion. She first visited Nepal in 1998 during an abroad semester with the School for International Training. After two years working for the Asia Society’s Education Department, she began her graduate studies at Cornell in 2002. She received her masters in South Asian Studies in 2003. Her master’s thesis focused on Maoist political ideology. She then returned to Nepal from 2003- 2004 to pursue research on Nepali students’ political consciousness with the support of a Fulbright USEF-Nepal grant. She began her Ph.D. coursework at Cornell in 2005. Funded by the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, her dissertation research occurred in Nepal and India between 2006-2008. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The planning, research, and writing for this project spanned six years in more than fifty districts of Nepal and three American cities. Many people have supported me intellectually, logistically, financially, and in spirit. Acknowledging everyone who has been a part of this process would be an arduous task. I apologize to anyone I have neglected to mention. Please know that this dissertation is a product of your influence and support. The project was generously supported by the USEF-Nepal Fulbright fellowship (2003-2004), the FLAS language grant (2005-2006), the Fulbright- Hays Dissertation research fellowship (2006-2007), the Wenner-Gren research fellowship (2007-2008), and the Sage fellowship (2005, 2008-2009). I also received support in the form of smaller travel grants from the Einaudi Center for International Studies and Society for Humanities at Cornell University. I would like particularly to thank Anne Stengle at the South Asia Program at Cornell University, Brigid Shipman at the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and Mary Beth Moss at the Wenner-Gren Foundation for administering my FLAS, Fulbright-Hays, and Wenner-Gren grants respectively. They were not only efficient but were welcomed sources of support as I navigated my research. Different sections of this dissertation were presented at the 2005 and 2008 Madison South Asia conferences on panels respectively entitled “Contentious Politics in Nepal” (chapter 3), and “An Exploration into Nepali Cultural Conceptions of the Category of Youth” (chapter 4), and at the 2008 and 2009 American Anthropological Association meetings on panels respectively entitled, “The slippery space of analytic interface: Paradigms of iv knowledge in ethnography” (introduction), and “Living with Anticipation and Uncertainty: Anthropology of the Actual and Unknowable” (chapter 2). Some sections’ earlier incarnations were published as articles in the Indian Sociological Bulletin (chapter 7) and Studies in Nepali History and Society (chapter 3), and as a book chapter in Maoists in the 21st Century (chapter 6). I thank all those who have organized these conference panels and edited these publications, particularly Dr. Mahendra Lawoti and Dr. Vibha Arora. The value of the feedback I received as a result has been immeasurable. At Cornell, I would like to thank my committee members, David Holmberg, Annelise Riles, and Hirokazu Miyazaki. David has been a source of ongoing support and advice in matters of research, analysis, and beyond. Annelise has provided essential feedback throughout this process that has pushed both my research and analysis to more nuanced levels; she has also been a consistent source of moral support throughout my academic career. At the beginning, Hiro made me fall in love with anthropology all over again in his course, “Development of Anthropology.” Later he suggested some of the main theorists that have influenced how I have framed the argument of this dissertation. Thank you all for your intellectual guidance and patience letting this journey take me where it would. I am also indebted to Kathryn March who guided me into the Cornell Anthropology Ph.D. program, who served as the secondary member of my master’s thesis committee, and who has been a constant source of advice on matters intellectual, field related, and logistic. She has also been a great source of personal support to me in both Ithaca and Kathmandu. I am grateful to Shambhu Oja, who taught me erudite Nepali so I was able to communicate with my interlocutors and understand their speeches, and made me memorize an endless list of Nepali proverbs. Under v his tutelage I have been able to discern subtle aspects of Nepali political culture that I might not have otherwise. I would also like to acknowledge Jacob Rigi, for teaching me Marxism and the tenets of radical thought, which allowed me to grasp its importance as a way of life for my interlocutors. Several other Cornell faculty have influenced my work or have been supportive over the years: Rebecca Bryant, Shelly Feldman, Jane Fajans, Viranjini Munasinghe, Stacy Langwick, Steve Sangren, Johanna Schoss, Terry Turner, and Andrew Wilford. I would also like to thank Bonnie Blanding- May, Donna Duncan, Bruce Roebal, and Margaret Rolfe in the Anthropology Department, Durga Bor, Bill Phelan, Anne Stengle in the South Asia Program, and Sarah Hale and Janine Brace in the Graduate School, for helping me navigate the complicated logistics my work has entailed. I also feel privileged to have benefited from the camaraderie and intellectual contributions of my fellow graduate students at Cornell, particularly Marie Andrée Jacob, Leticia Barrera, Kate Bundy-Harding, Miranda Cady-Halett, Adrianna Chira, Jason Cons, Mathew Errie, Jason Ettlinger, Jessica Falcone, Daena Funahashi,