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Reframing Ethnicity: Academic Tropes, Recognition beyond Politics, and Ritualized Action between Nepal and India
Author(s) -
Shneiderman Sara
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.12107
Subject(s) - ethnic group , cognitive reframing , politics , context (archaeology) , ethnography , consciousness , action (physics) , sociology , identity (music) , political action , gender studies , anthropology , political science , aesthetics , history , social psychology , epistemology , psychology , law , archaeology , art , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across the Himalayan borders of Nepal and India, I revisit disciplinary debates about ethnicity. I focus on the expressive production of ethnic consciousness among members of the Thangmi (Thami) community in a context of high cross‐border mobility. I argue that ethnicity is the result not only of the prerogatives of state control or market forces but also of a ritual process through which identity itself is produced as a sacred object that binds together diverse members of the collectivity. Thangmi participation in a range of ritualized actions demonstrates how mobility across national borders yields a high level of self‐consciousness about the efficacy of each form of action as well as of the frames within which action unfolds. Ethnicity may be understood simultaneously as a historically contingent process and a wellspring of affectively real cultural content, enabling us to make better sense—in both scholarly and political terms—of emergent ethnic claims in South Asia and beyond.