Where is Gender in Heritage Research?

April 3, 2024

Curated by Pooja Kalita (HaP Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, South Asian University), with responses from Stefanie Lotter, Christiane Brosius, Monalisa Maharjan, Binita Magaiya, Emiline Smith and Emily Hyatt.

This reflective blog post is the result of a research meeting, chaired by Pooja Kalita, about the critical intersections between gender and heritage research. The following responses emerged from the meeting’s initial discussion and have been edited here for brevity and context. A brief bibliography follows.

Pooja Kalita

“As a researcher and, most importantly, as a woman researcher trained in the discipline of sociology, gender has been one of the starkest components of my ethnographic practices. In around a decade of research on the various aspects of gender and its performances, two questions that have consistently stood out are, ‘How has my own gender identity as a woman impacted my ethnographic practices?’ and ‘How do my research participants experience gender?’

Inspired by the genre of feminist writing that brought to light the significance of gender in doing and writing ethnography, I have found myself replying in the affirmative to the omnipresent question raised by Judith Stacey (1988) and Lila Abu-Lughod (1990) in their articles of the same title: ‘Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?’. On a closer look, a more important question to me has been about how there can be a feminist ethnography. In other words, how can one come to understand and write about gender? To navigate such concerns, I was honored to lead a session on gender and heritage research with some of the members of the Heritage as Placemaking (HaP) project.

From my own experience of carrying out fieldwork in Nepal and India as part of the HaP project, I have been considered both in the category of ‘our women’ and the ‘other women’ researching on heritage of a place. While on one hand, it is a commonplace practice to perceive women as the bearers of tradition and heritage, I have realized that issues related to safety are a crucial factor when it comes to women accessing places of heritage, as local residents, researchers, travelers, pilgrims, etc. However, I would like to point out that when I underline the component of gender in heritage research, or any research for that matter, I am referring to a category that includes diverse gender identities, that are beyond just being women. The following responses put forward in this post further highlight the need to ponder the question, ‘Where is gender in heritage research?’ and why it is important.”

Stefanie Lotter

“In June 2019, the Kathmandu Post reported on a demonstration to reject the controversial Guthi Bill. The event was possibly the largest crowd since 2006 to demonstrate in the streets. A large group of Newar men in leather gear drove up to Yala Sadak, on motorcycles, shouting slogans. I looked at them and didn't see the Guthi System—this fantastic heritage institution that protects religious commons—rather, I saw angry, privileged young men using motorcycles to voice their discontent at having some male privileges threatened. Women are largely invisible when heritage property and the commons are discussed. Heritage is always gendered.”

Christiane Brosius

“For me, a question would be in what way we must rethink gender when we want to question ideas of heritage as ‘tradition’ and thus ‘preserved’ and ‘nurtured’ by and through women, mothers, wives—this becomes particularly tricky when we think about forms of gatekeeping and restricting women by conservative (patriarchal) views, norms, dogmas, and politics—from the public sphere, such as in India, so that they cannot enjoy nightlife, or roam on their own. Since heritage is often associated with tradition, this would be a possibly often-made danger when heritage is studied, communicated, institutionalized, and becomes associated with norms and values. This is relevant, in my view, because heritage can further define and confine gendered roles, undermining possible forms of empowerment and diversity, for instance, in the case of queer heritage, or ways in which single women can engage with or contribute to transformative dimensions of heritage. These concerns, as Pooja had outlined, pertain to ways of accessing heritage—for researchers, too.

I am concretely thinking of how Pushpa Palanchoke encourages women of different social, caste, and age strata to participate in musical practice in Kirtipur, thus expanding and rethinking the right to the city and making place for alternative and additional visions of belonging and innovation. This also demands knowledge and communication of the conditions that usually prevent women from practicing music, getting initiated, making their own tunes, and changing ritual dynamics. I would see the task of HaP to make such variations and needs for differentiation visible and reflect on this as great potential. Another example is that of heritage activism, where, if listening to Monalisa and her research, one could argue that it’s a male domain because of the gendered notion of men being in public and in ‘the world,’ thus having an easier relation to thinking about their right to be activists. Meanwhile, women might still largely be seen as those nurturing heritage, rather than ‘defending’ or fighting for it. I am not sure, but this could be a hypothesis.

This might open up possibilities to rethink ‘commoning’ heritage. It might also open up ways to challenge the gendered normativities of nationalist/identity politics (e.g., Hindutva). Heritage studies should be recalibrated, in a similar vein. The focus on gendered notions of place, tradition, modernity, etc. also impacts how we theorize, so I would propose that queer studies, masculinity studies, embodiment, etc. could all contribute to transforming heritage studies—and maybe also facilitate a sub-branch such as ‘critical gender heritage studies.’”

Monalisa Maharjan

“My research with heritage in the Kathmandu Valley has been mostly with communities: either traditional communities, in the form of guthi, or the new group of activist communities. With both of the groups, ‘traditional’ or ‘modern,’ it makes me wonder, is heritage just for men? Where are the women in this scenario?

Guthi is by its nature patriarchal, as only male members of the family may join. But it is really surprising to see that, in the field of heritage activism, it is still men who run the show. Sometimes it feels like a boy band, or place to show male machismo. In both scenarios, it becomes a place in the public sphere where one can show their work to the public; that might be about playing dhyme music, pulling chariots, or advocating for heritage. In all these places, one has an opportunity to show something. However, there is hardly any place for women. In activism, there are a few women, but it seems that after some time they get fed up and discontinue. Maybe they do not have as much free time as their male counterparts, or they do not feel the need to show anything.”

Binita Magaiya

“[Gender] came up in a conversation with a friend. He was admiring how women at a construction site were toiling as equal to men here in Nepal. Noticeably, it was a rare sight to him, as it was not common in the US. On the other hand, I was quite used to the sight of women laborers carrying heavy sand, bricks, or any construction items to the sites. They did not work as the actual masons but did take on supportive roles. In the restoration of Nyatapol in Bhaktapur, everyone saw how women came to work, cleaning up the roof tiles, juggling the clay for roof tiles from one level to another, preparing mortar, cleaning other wooden items, doing any work they could find on site. But in Kasthamandap, it was a different scenario. Although the head carpenter Laxmi baa was from Bhaktapur, he sternly forbade any woman to be part of the core construction team. As Laxmi baa claimed the sole authority of employing workers in the site, he didn’t want any women folk around because of the eminent dangers of heavy timber elements slipping and other forms of accident. It might have been his protective instinct. But on the other hand, I used to go and pull the timber alongside other laborers, if I happened to be on-site at that moment. I used to love shouting ‘haaste haaisten’, and encouraging the team to pull the timber beams, posts, or rafters even harder. It was amusing to see Laxmi baa’s reaction to my actions as he could not forbid me from doing such labor-intensive work.”

Emiline Smith

“Gender is part of almost every aspect of my ethnographic work: from the way I position myself in the field and how people respond to this, to the way my participants access and engage with heritage. Heritage gives us a sense of belonging and identity. It is therefore a pivotal part of the ways in which gender roles are constructed, represented, and experienced. In many of the field sites I study, men and women have different roles and responsibilities when it comes to physical and intangible heritage, and therefore will relate to heritage in different ways. For example, in my current field sites, those responsible for traditional and religious practices related to physical and living heritage are mostly men, whereas those responsible for domestic life (including the daily upkeep of heritage sites) are mostly women.

Gender inequality is pervasive in the communities I work in. As a result, women’s access to and participation in heritage is restricted, and women’s voices are marginalized when it comes to the way heritage is managed, protected, and conceptualized. Studying these aspects of heritage as a foreign woman can therefore be extremely sensitive: much like other markers such as country of origin, race, educational background, and relationship status, my identity as ‘woman’ and/or ‘foreigner’ (insider/outsider) impact the research process and my access to field sites and participants.”

Emily Hyatt

“As the coordinator of Heritage as Placemaking, my research is not related directly to the HaP project and, unlike most of the rest of the team, I do not do ethnographic research. As my work is situated within early modern art history and visual/material culture, most of my inquiry revolves around object-based analysis or archival research. Perhaps because I don’t research (living) people, I tend to not often consider my own positionality as much as I should. However, when I reflect on it, thinking about gender and queerness has made me attentive to shifting valences in the historical periods that I study: it has brought up, for example, how certain materials or ways of making have historically carried associations of gender, class, or (proto)national origin, and how these meanings have shifted with time and geography, through interventions and encounters. Learning how to look beyond the disciplinary values of art history to find historically marginalized ways of making has become a priority of mine. So, from that standpoint, I would say my gender has encouraged me to redirect my patterns of attention, and shifting my ways of seeing is helping me to excavate certain aspects of how women in the past approached acts of making despite often-significant structural barriers.

More generally, I’ve also become interested in queerness as a methodological tool for studying the histories of early modern visual and material culture. Queering the history of art creates an opportunity to cross traditional disciplinary formations, opening up space to investigate histories of the marginal and ephemeral, and to center notions of labor and materiality in a way that reveals expanded participation in stories about making and knowing. What happens when our definition of art history expands to include “poor” materials or ephemeral arts, for example? Alternatively, how can we take stock of objects that have no named artist but are nonetheless fascinating case studies for the way they combine materials, techniques, or ways of knowing?”

A short bibliography provided by Christiane Brosius relevant to the above discussion:

Wera Grahn, Ross J. Wilson (eds.) 2018. Gender and Heritage: Performance, Place and Politics. Routledge
Luther, J. Daniel, and Jennifer Ung Loh, eds. 2019. 'Queer' Asia: Decolonising and Reimagining Sexuality and Gender. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Martin, Fran, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland, and Audrey Yue, eds. 2008. Asiapacifiqueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Reading, A. (2015). Making Feminist Heritage Work: Gender and Heritage. In: Waterton, E., Watson, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137293565_25
Shahani, Nishant. 2021. Pink Revolutions: Globalization, Hindutva, and Queer Triangles in Contemporary India. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Smith, L. (2008) ‘Heritage, Gender and Identity’ in B. Graham and P. Howard (eds) The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 159–79.
Vanita, Ruth (ed). 2001. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. London: Routledge.

From the Himalayas to Sri Lanka: Reflections on presenting at the Asian Criminology Conference

March 8, 2024

Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha is a researcher, translator, and trekking guide from Dolpa, Nepal. He is working with Dr. Emiline Smith on various projects in the Himalaya. The following reflective blog post recounts his experiences doing research with Emiline and presenting their work at the Asian Criminology Conference in Sri Lanka.

Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha at the 14th Asian Criminology Conference. Photo: Emiline Smith

I moved to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, in the late 1990s. I was approximately 8 years old. Like many parents from Nepal’s remote areas, mine sent me to Kathmandu for a better education. Although it is now a long time ago, I remember all the emotions I felt, for example, the excitement of seeing big houses, big buses, and planes for the first time. It was just like the stories that the older people in the village used to tell us. There were so many things I had never seen before, everywhere I looked. Now it is 2023 and I took my first international flight alone, which brought back all the memories of excitement that I had when I was moving to Kathmandu.

My name is Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha and I am a trekking guide, translator, and a research assistant in my homeland Dolpa, Nepal. In October 2023, with the help of Dr. Emiline Smith, I got the chance to participate in the 14th Asian Criminology Conference at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defense University in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to give a presentation on the topic “Equitable Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange in Research on Sensitive Topic in the Trans-Himalayan Region of Dolpa, Nepal.”

Emiline had told me about the opportunity to participate in the conference during fieldwork in the Himalayas earlier that year, but I did not pay much attention at the time because, for me, it was beyond my imagination to travel abroad. However, even with our limited internet connection, we applied for it, and to my surprise our abstract was accepted. Still, I did not want to get my hopes up, until a few weeks later when Emiline asked me what dates I wanted to fly. Only when I received the visa for Sri Lanka, did I start to believe I would actually get to go. I got very motivated to present about our experience of doing research in the Himalayas. Being able to travel abroad for the first time in my life is something I had never expected would happen. There are of course people from my village that travelled abroad for education or work, but I just never thought this could happen to me. I was so excited that I immediately started to prepare for the presentation and also did research about Sri Lanka and the trip practicalities: for example, I asked some of my friends about their airport experience and travelling abroad because I wanted to be prepared for everything.

Although there were some initial hiccups at Kathmandu airport, I finally was on my way. This was a much bigger plane than I usually travel with to my home in Dolpa. They even served us food! I had a window seat, and it was fantastic to see the world from this angle. It was the first time I saw the ocean. I got through the immigration check in Sri Lanka, and when they stamped my passport was when I got more excited and nervous at the same time. I was actually in a different country. Luckily, I can read and speak English, which made immigration much easier, but it took a while to get my luggage because I have never been to such a big airport before. Kind strangers helped me out – it is important to ask when you do not know and you’re in a new environment.

After leaving the airport, the first thing I was impressed by were the cars that they drive and the road that they drive on. Most of the cars that I saw were from Japan and they were hybrid cars that can run both on electricity and diesel – something that is very rare to see in Nepal. Sri Lankan roads and highways are so clean, paved and very wide, and no one was honking. I wanted to see as much as possible of Sri Lanka and to make the most of this opportunity. Although the conference took 3 days, we were also able to travel around a bit to see some of the country. Emiline and I have done months of fieldwork together in the Himalayas, but this was a whole new experience for me because the roles were reversed: now she was the guide and I was the one discovering new things.

We were able to visit the Nine Arch Bridge which I liked so much because it was my first time seeing a train in real life. I really enjoyed just seeing the train moving on the bridge. This might sound weird to some people, but for me it was one of the highlights of this trip. On my 3rd day in Sri Lanka, we travelled from Ella to Kandy by train in the early morning. This was an unforgettable experience for me, I will never forget it in my life. The train journey and the landscape along with tea farms were amazing. The train is such a cheap and convenient way to travel, with beautiful views – I wish Nepal had more trains. When we finally arrived to Kandy, this beautiful city, it gave so much of a homely feeling, like a city in Nepal. I like it there: the lake at the city center, the architecture, and all the nature surrounding the city.

A train running over the Nine Arch Bridge. Photo: Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha

The Sri Lankan people are so friendly, they smile all the time. I felt safe to travel alone on a bus and train to visit some more sights while Dr Smith had to go back to Colombo. This was pretty exciting and challenging at the same time, as I was still by myself in an unknown country, but I managed somehow and at some point I didn’t even feel like I was a tourist unless someone asked me for my passport. I felt like a local, I just had to speak English instead of Nepali. That day I visited Sigiriya, Dambulla caves and the Golden Temple, all places which I have seen in pictures but was actually able to experience in person. I absolutely loved travelling around Sri Lanka, especially because of its natural beauty: everything is so green. One thing I noticed was that people always have nature close to them: instead of having to go look for it during a hiking trip for example, they can just come our of their house and it’s there. Even the University where the conference took place had a garden, which is so important for students to think and enjoy and have some food. This also means there is so much wood for construction available, which is much scarcer where I come from. The only thing that was difficult to get used to were the bugs: Dolpa is part of the Himalayan region, and it is too high above sea level for many insects to survive, but Sri Lanka has many insects I had never seen or felt before.

Traveling by train in Sri Lanka. Photo: Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha

Then the conference started, my first academic conference. Our presentation was only on day 2, so I was able to first visit the University and get used to how a conference works. It was nice to see so many people from different Asian countries and different backgrounds. I had a chat with some of the participants and it was wonderful, as most of them were highly educated, whereas I am a farmer from the Himalayas, but still our conversations flowed. I was the only person representing Nepal, and I was proud to be there. On our presentation day, I wore a traditional Dolpa outfit, and it felt really good to be there. Many people asked me about Dolpa and about Nepal. I felt nervous but was well-prepared for our presentation, and it went well. I was happy I did it, because it allowed me to share my experiences about the fieldwork we did for the Heritage as Placemaking research on yartsa gunbhu and the trafficking of Dolpa’s cultural heritage, as well as the children’s book ‘Pema and the Stolen Statue from Dolpa’ that I helped Emiline with. This fieldwork allowed me to reflect more on my people, culture and the region I am from, so it was nice to share this with such a diverse audience.

During our presentation, titled “Equitable Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange in Research on Sensitive Topic in the Trans-Himalayan Region of Dolpa, Nepal,” I discussed what it was like to work as research facilitator for a foreign project. Being a research facilitator in Dolpa means that I get to share, learn, and help people experience our culture, religion and tradition. They would not be able to do this without coming to the region. The fieldwork itself is physically demanding: foreign researchers are not used to crossed 5000+m snowy passes or crossing the same river 13 times per day. Dolpa is the biggest district of Nepal yet the most remote, so field sites are difficult to reach. This means that facilitating logistical arrangements is challenging, for example, a usual trekking day includes 6 to 10 hours of walking across different Himalayan passes, and at the end of the day we must either camp or stay in guesthouses while arranging our own food. But what is extra important during a research trip is of course the arrangement of interviews and connecting with people, which is not needed during a commercial trip. As a research facilitator, I take care of the researcher’s safety and facilitate the logistical aspects of the fieldwork, as well as translating and connecting to participants.

That means that sometimes I am an outsider working on a foreign project, and sometimes I am an insider with expert knowledge. In a way, Dr Emiline and I helped each other: my access and experience certainly were invaluable for the project, but it also gave me a chance to expand my knowledge on topics that I have not studied, such as criminology, and be part of research projects that I cannot do by myself even if I wish to do so. It's rare to have a chance to participate in an academic project, but what I appreciated about working with Emiline is that she treated me as an expert about the region and the trek. It made me more aware that other projects have stereotyped Dolpa and Dolpopa, which does not help our region – instead, more community collaboration in academic projects is necessary to help both the communities and the researchers. Our region is so underrepresented in every aspect of Nepal, including the political landscape. Projects like this one help draw attention to our problems and needs.

Zinpa Gyaltsen Budha walking on the beach.

We ended the conference in Galle, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site as it is famous for its colonial buildings. It was there where I first experienced being in the ocean. Walking around these colorful alleyways in the fort, enjoying the beach and the Sri Lankan food were also a crucial part of the trip which I will never forget in my life. So many fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood, it seemed like an endless supply.

As a guy from the Himalayas who had never thought of travelling abroad (and whose parents have never travelled abroad), I was able to visit Sri Lanka on my first international trip. I was able to see and do so many exciting things for the first time: eating soft ice cream, seeing a turtle, swim in the ocean, seeing where tea comes from, fly on a big plane, ride a train, present at an international conference, walking on the beach. It inspired me to work harder to be able to travel and discover more. I am very grateful for Dr Smith and the Heritage as Placemaking project for making these experiences happen. I hope that our cultural heritage and artifacts will be respected and kept where they belong. I also hope that Dolpopa will be included more in political matters within the country, so that they have better access to education and health care and a chance to increase their standard of living.

Dr. Emiline Smith reflects on her experience presenting and working with Zinpa and on exploitation of Dolpa knowledge:

“What a privilege it was to witness Zinpa discover some of these new experiences while attending the ACC in Sri Lanka. He presented flawlessly on cross-cultural research on sensitive topics in front of a diverse audience of academics, law enforcement & practitioners, being the only attendee from Nepal, let alone from his region, Dolpa.

When Zinpa and I first started working together for a range of projects in 2020, he immediately asked me how my research could benefit the local community; if it was yet another exploitative project that would demand time, food, and knowledge from his community without gaining anything in return. Dolpa communities have long been exploited for their knowledge regarding the unique Dolpa landscape, its ecosystems and their culture and religion. As a result, much research has been done on the Dolpa region, but not by Dolpopa (people from Dolpa). In addition, Dolpopa are not well-represented in Nepal’s central government, meaning that policies and practice are rarely locally appropriate. It offered me the opportunity to reshape my research and prioritize more collaborative, equitable knowledge creation processes, foregrounding local expert perspectives.

It was fantastic to see Zinpa present at this international conference, but disappointing to know he was the only research facilitator there. Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) is often used in academic research. It is instrumental in all facets of research, including translation, documentation, facilitation, classification, dissemination, etc. Yet it is rarely credited. Criminology has only recently started to address its colonial and exploitative foundations, and there is much room for improvement when it comes to platforming the ILK that it builds on. This includes the knowledge of those that facilitate our research. Interlocutors, guides, gatekeepers, and other research facilitators are rarely named or credited within criminology, and it is even rarer to see them as co-authors or co-presenters. Much more collaborative knowledge creation, including collaborative output development, is needed to promote inclusive and equitable research frameworks within criminology and academia as a whole.”

Phalcās in Kathmandu: Everyday Rhythms and Stories of Placemaking

January 11, 2023

Julia Shrestha is a student research assistant in the Heritage as Placemaking project.

This blog post was originally produced in March 2022 for the student blog of “Tracing the Urban Everyday,” a class led by Prof. Dr. Christiane Brosius for the MA in Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University. It was part of an international teaching initiative titled “Urban transformation and placemaking: Fostering Learning from South Asia and Germany,” undertaken by Heidelberg University, The School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (SPA), and Kathmandu University’s department of art and design. The class was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as part of their program "Subject-Related Partnerships with Institutions of Higher Education in Developing Countries.

They are places to rest, find shelter from the rain and sun, hang out, socialize, shop and bargain, worship, play, make music and feast. The architecture of Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley, unites a plethora of activities in the phalcās (Nepali pāṭi). These are arcaded platforms, traditionally built of timber, brick and mud mortar. Some are more elaborate, but mostly they are simple structures used by the immediate resident community, as well as “outsiders” – traders, travelers, and passers-by, looking for shelter or a place to offer their products. Perhaps at first sight less impressive than the grand temples and palaces, Kathmandu valley’s phalcās are valued for their mulifaceted functionality in everyday socio cultural-life.

Urban rhythms and placemaking

Above all, phalcās are extraordinary rhythmic sites: from the temporal succession of daily activities, their integration in ritual and festive cycles, to the rhythms of songs played during dāphā bhajan, the offering of devotional music. According to Henri Lefebvre (2004 [1992]), it is the interaction of diverse rhythms that animates everyday life in a city. A place is characterized and permeated by an "ensemble of rhythms" (Edensor 2010: 69). Analyzing these rhythms tells of power and its shifting distribution: who can claim the temporary right to a site? Which times a phalcā "belongs" to whom? How do these relations shift in the course of a day, or longer temporary intervals, or for particular occasions?

Early in the morning, traders set up their "showrooms" - spreading vegetables, fruit or utensils right at the edge of the platform, sometimes transforming the whole phalcā into a store. Mobile merchants with wheeled carts or bicycles announce their wares, while devotees ring the bell to worship the God in the phalcā. By 9:30, honking of scooters fills the air. When heavy traffic takes off, the temporary shops are already closing. In the afternoon, elder people rest in the shade provided by the phalcā, and children play around. In the evening, a bhajan group meets to play and sing devotional songs, until the night falls and the place belongs to the dogs.

Ganesh phalcā in Patan, Lalitpur (Photo: Julia Shrestha)

While Nepal’s capital is relentlessly expanding, rapid urbanization also affects the rich social lives of phalcās: They emerge equally as places of continuity as of change, of reclaiming and reinterpreting history and heritage, as sites of conflict and resistance, whilst deeply remaining sites of the everyday.

Placemaking can be understood as a dynamic process of transformation wherein people, flows of capital, objects and physical matter converge and produce a place collectively; place emerges as an "ever changing polyrhytmic constellation" (Edensor 2011: 190-191). This constellation is probably never without contestation and conflict. Let us look at three sites, which all tell unique stories of placemaking, showing phalcās as such constellations.

Kvaylāchī phalcā, Sunaguthi (Photo: Julia Shrestha).

Sunaguthi, Kvaylāchī phalcā: A phalcā withstanding road widening

Next to the extremely dusty – in monsoon months muddy – Sunaguthi-Chapagaun road stands the reconstructed Kvaylāchī phalcā. Damaged during previous earthquakes, meanwhile rebuilt in concrete, the phalcā was torn down completely in 2018 and reconstructed by a group of volunteers, using traditional techniques and sticking to the historical foundations. Significantly, this happend when a major road widening project was planned for the town of Sunaguthi, which, if executed, would completely swallow up the phalcā. Padma Sundar Maharjan, architect and a key figure in the reconstruction, explains: “The main idea was: it is not only to rebuild that phalcā. […] if it’s built then it’s for the people also, and subtly resists this road widening project.” In this way, rebuilding a phalcā becomes an act of resistance, visible and tangible. It is an act to demonstrate the vital importance of the many small public structures along the road, and crucially: of the road itself, which forms the backbone of all outdoors activities in the settlement. Kvaylāchī phalcā, now coated thick in powdery brownish dust, also speaks of the need of a well-paved road. The pitching done last year in a sort of ad hoc instance to calm complaining voices, crumbled after 2 months, leaving the road in an even worse condition than before. To those who take part in daily activities around the phalcā, the dust and noise from the road are constant reminders of the failure of responsible authorities to provide them with decent infrastructure. During the annual Navadurgā dances performed in front of the phalcā, this becomes also visible to a larger audience that attends the festival.

“The main idea was: it is not only to rebuild that phalcā. […] if it’s built, then it’s for the people also, and subtly resists this road widening project.”

The road to Chapagaun, Sunaguthi (Photo: Julia Shrestha).

Pulchowk, Samay phalcā: (Re)claiming a site and heritage

Another place, another phalcā, rebuilt with a different political message. Samay phalcā of the Pulchowk area of Lalitpur, which derives its name from the distribution of festive food samay baji, had collapsed in the 1970ies. It took decades of local activism until the City of Lalitpur lately won the legal dispute with the Laligurans Bank over the site, submitting historical photographs to the court as proof. Reconstruction was done by a committee formed by locals of Pulchowk, and completed in March 2022. The whole case was supported by Lalitpur's mayor, Chiri Babu Maharjan. Unlike Kvaylāchi phalcā, reconstructed Samay phalcā looks quite different from historical photographs: it (re)appears as a mixture of elements from different periods and styles, probably also gathered from different locations, built directly attached to the bank – thereby blocking its main entry. The final touches are also rather unusual for a phalcā: "Samay phalcā" is written in large letters on the wall, statues of Gods and Goddesses received nameplates, and the phalcā is illuminated at night. Unmistakably, this is a triumphant message that the community's right to this place has prevailed over the rights of the cooperative bank. This phalcā raises a multitude of questions, including: Who is the rightful owner of land, when private property regimes and other, presumably more ancient claims collide? How exactly is the "community" defined?

Inauguration of Samay phalcā, March 19, 2022. Photo by Yogesh Budathoki.

Kirtipur, Chithu phalcā: Reviving links to a “lost” tradition

There is not only interest in rebuilding phalcās, but also in reviving practices related to them. The third story is of bringing a practice “back” to a place, while innovating the tradition along. Bharat Maharjan, historian and local of Kirtipur, discovered in his study of ancient (late Malla period) inscriptions in phalcās that a particular tradition called “hāthu haykegu” was widespread in Newar towns of the valley. This ritual involves the procession of a mask of the God Bhairava to a phalcā, where devotees receive chyāng (rice beer) from the mouth of the God. Until recently, hāthu haykegu only continued to be performed during the festival of Indrajātrā in Basantapur (Kathmandu) and few phalcās in the valley. To revive it in Kirtipur, a group of local youth got together and sought public support. This included fundraising, setting up a new trust (guṭhī), and cooperation with local artist and music groups. Funds were only collected from the public to ensure the process stays community-owned. Crafted by traditional artists in Bungamati, the mask was brought in a procession to Kirtipur – thus, the ritual also strengthens the connection of the two towns. While this is an instance of reinstalling a tradition, it also adds many new aspects: from the constellation of people involved, the ways of participation, the making of the mask – which is probably the largest wooden Bhairava mask of this kind – to the unique fusion of musical performances, including new female dāphā group members. Reviving the ritual can be read as a very contemporary and conscious sign against the decline of traditional arts and living heritage under urbanization.

The sounds of hāthu, polyrhythmic culmination in front of the phalcā: Dāphā groups of Kirtipur, sounds of trumpets, cymbals and drums; vehicles honking their way through the crowd; excited chatter as the chyāng flows and as people take photos of the mask.

The performance of the hāthu ritual in front of Chithu phalcā, Kirtipur (Photo: Julia Shrestha).

These glimpses show phalcās as sites of continuity and innovation, of social constellations activated in rhythms of everyday and festive cycles, and as sites of collective placemaking in a context of massive urban transformations happening in the city of Kathmandu and the valley at large.

Fieldwork for this essay was carried out in February and March 2022. I thank Padma Sundar Maharjan and Bharat Maharjan for sharing about their commitment for phalcās and the living heritage of Kathmandu valley.

References:

Edensor, Tim. 2010. “Walking in Rhythms: Place, Regulation, Style and the Flow of Experience.”

Visual Studies 25 (1): 69–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725861003606902.

———. 2011. “Commuter: Mobility, Rhythm and Commuting.” In Geographies of Mobilities:

Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman, 189–204. Farnham: Ashgate.

Lefebvre, Henri. 2004 [1992]. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. London ; New

York: Continuum.

Ritual and Spatial Placemaking: Katina Robe Offering Ceremony

December 12, 2022

Sri Lanka Maha Vihara, Lumbini

A Pictorial Record

5th and 6th November 2022

By Dr. Pooja Kalita and Prof. Sasanka Perera

Katina or Kathina Ceremony is the main Buddhist calendar ritual in the Theravada tradition. It marks the end of the rainy season. During the rainy season, or vasa, monks were conventionally expected to retreat to the forest or to their temples, take a break from their mendicant lifestyle and refuge from the rain, and concentrate on meditation and learning. The present Katina ceremony is a continuation of this old tradition, with numerous variations and additions over time in different places.

The Sri Lankan interpretation in Lumbini, Nepal, incorporates recognizable Sri Lankan traditions but also involves innovations based on cultural and geo-physical conditions in Lumbini.

What is presented here is not an analysis of the ceremony or its relevance to placemaking or heritage dynamics, but a chronological pictorial recording of what exactly happened as the ceremony got underway on 5th and 6th November 2022.

Click the image below (or here) to view the pictorial record of the Katina robe offering ceremony.

All photos and text are © Sasanka Perera, Pooja Kalita, and the Heritage as Placemaking project

Notes from the field: Dolpa

July 1, 2022

By Dr. Emiline Smith

Snow-capped mountains and green hills covered in pastureland surround us at about 4800m amsl. When looking very closely, one might distinguish tiny, colourful dots on those green hills: it is so-called 'yartsa season' for the people of Dho. Every year in May and June, thousands of people climb several hundreds of metres up the hills and mountains that surround them, in search of a tiny fungus-caterpillar called yartsa gunbu. This Himalayan caterpillar is in big demand internationally because of its aphrodisiac and medicinal qualities. This demand has changed the living standard for those who are able to find it, but recently, overharvesting in combination with climate change is taking its toll on this very valuable, niche resource.

Figure 2. Four Buddhist chortens (stupas) in front of a gompa in Dho valley (E. Smith, 2022).

Dolpa's landscapes, cultures, language and people are distinctly separate from the rest of Nepal; rather, they are closer related to Tibet. Its stunning landscapes have inspired internationally renowned books and movies including Nepal’s first Oscar-nominated film ‘Caravan’ (shot exclusively in Dolpa). But despite international attention, Dolpa is still largely ignored by central government, and the region is often exploited for its medicinal plants (including wild cannabis, a large variety of orchids and mushrooms, etc), pasturelands, and indigenous knowledge by outsiders.

Dolpa is Nepal's largest and remotest district. It is the district of yaks, snow leopards, eagles, musk deer and blue sheep (which are accidentally not blue in colour). It is also the district of nomads and living with the seasons: moving from higher to lower grounds and vice versa is part of a yearly cycle. But Dolpa is currently at a crossroads. Limited 'development' as driven by central government and foreign stakeholders has reached the region selectively, resulting in half-finished roads and other infrastructure projects scattered around the landscape. As a result, mules and horses are still the main form of transportation for anything from tin roofs and flatscreen TVs to food supplies and mattresses.

Figure 4. A hotel tent surrounded by extensive vegetable gardens. Some valleys are more conducive to crop production and gardening than others (E. Smith, 2022).

Social media access provides information about what is available outside the Dolpa bubble but does not make this attainable or accessible. Roads, electricity, heating, stable internet access and other basic amenities, let alone luxuries such as varied foods and methods of transportation, are still primarily experienced through a phone screen. So, although phones have brought the globalized 'outside' in, it requires a lot of mental gymnastics for the people of Dolpa to consolidate local reality with globalized digital experiences. Dolpopa selectively balance their need to participate in the global market economy with a focus on localization and placemaking out of necessity due to their isolation.

Modernization therefore comes with mixed, and sometimes unexpected, consequences for Dolpa. For example, Dolpa's children are often sent to Kathmandu, India, or further afield to gain what is considered better quality education, for which they are separated from their family for years. During that time, they often forget Dolpa's people, villages, landscape, culture and religion - instead, they become accustomed to city life. A reverse culture shock happens when they return to their village and reunite with their family. Yet most of the younger generation I speak to has found ways to express and celebrate their Dolpa origins while also tapping into cosmopolitanism through e.g. clothing, accessorizing, vocabulary, behaviour etc. For example, one of my interviewees proudly shows me her see-through smartphone case, covered in stickers with quotes from popular Korean drama series, combined with dried yartsa gunbu squeezed between her phone and the case: the perfect tribute to a life lived between worlds.

Figure 1. A typical tent camp for yartsa gunbu collectors in Dho valley (E. Smith, 2022).

I am in this remote region of Nepal for fieldwork for three different projects. This morning, my research assistant/trekking guide Zinpa and I are interviewing yartsa harvesters about the criminogenic potential of this Himalayan caterpillar. In the afternoon, we are visiting one of the nearby gompas (monasteries) to speak to the local monks about inventorying their monastery's religious artefacts. Nepal's religious and cultural objects have been the victims of looting and trafficking for the past seventy years, and the Dolpa region is no exception to this. Every monastery we have visited so far has been the target of thieves responding to ongoing market demand for Dolpa's cultural heritage. It is devastating to hear monks accounts of the thefts and their consequences, all because foreign demand has put a price on living heritage.

Figure 3. Dolpa’s stunning landscapes never fail to impress (E. Smith, 2022).

Placemaking in Dolpa has become a continuous navigation of selectively letting 'machines' and other modernization in, while maintaining the structure of its society through customs, traditions, beliefs and public spaces. Greenhouses are becoming more critical to food security, diversifying diets consisting primarily of crops from the field (potatoes, buckwheat, barley, rice) and extending the vegetable growing season. This has not yet impacted the popularity of instant noodles though, which together with dal bhat and yak butter tea gets most of the Dolpopa (people from Dolpa) through the day. Affordable products from China have become easily available in Dolpa, especially as much is traded in exchange for the aforementioned yartsa gunbu. As a result, traditional dress (tsuba) is making way for tracksuits and jeans. Chinese- imported motorbikes are an increasingly popular way of transportation and status signalling in some of the valleys. Solar panels don every house and tent to ensure phones and power banks are continuously charged.

Figure 5. Dolpa’s dazzling turquoise Phoksundo Lake (E. Smith, 2022).

Future Imaginings: 'Review of the 37th UFD Conference (New Lagos), 2057'

May 30, 2022

Jointly organised by the United Federation of the Decolonised (UFD) in collaboration with the Library of Repatriation (LoR)*

By Thirangie Jayatilake and Stefanie Lotter, with Binita Magaiya, Sabin Ninglekhu, Pooja Kalita, and Emiline Smith

*This is a fictitious conference review that emerged from a Heritage as Placemaking team discussion on decolonisation from the vantage point of various disciplinary backgrounds. As a creative experiment, we envisaged a future conference taking place in 2057, when decolonisation as an ongoing process might be nearing realisation.

For the sake of this exercise, we put out a fictional call for papers to the research team, appointed keynote speakers, reviewed panels and wrote book reviews, pondered over the food we would eat, and imagined how our joint concern with heritage studies might have developed. While forcing ourselves to dream of future alternatives, to our surprise, we were little concerned with questions of authenticity or the built environment. Instead, we felt the need to imagine ecological utopias, develop the connection between heritage and gender, as well as dive into new materialism and relate it to repatriation. As a reflective blog post and an entry into our project’s collective imagination, we have written a short conference review, below:

July 30th, 2057 marked the beginning of the 37th United Federation of the Decolonised (UFD) Conference in New Lagos.

Held in collaboration with the Library of Repatriation (LoR), the three-day UFD conference saw leading anthropologists, sociologists, conservationists, and criminologists host a series of thought-provoking panels and discussions on cultural ownership and appropriation, material encounters, gender traditions, heritage activism, and the large field of heritage diplomacy.

The panel ‘Colonial Museums’ discussed the once glorified status of objects as prized loot detached from their place of origin, their makers, and their users. With the recent completion of the Repatriation Period (2025–2040), a new disciplinary field, ‘forum studies’, has emerged. This discipline, which took centre stage at the 37th Conference, looks at museal legacies to reflect upon what has connected people amid the vast, historic dislocation of material culture. The conference also introduced the Object Lab, a practical session of object handling that invited participants either in person or as avatars to handle a collection of former museum artefacts. During the reaching out of objects (darshan) to their displaced diasporas and transnational adorators, emotions ran high. Elderly audiences in particular felt both ‘blessed and entitled’, as Howard Grovenour famously, aptly described his relationship with the set of ‘his’ well known objects.

Sessions had to be substantially extended for member groups of stateless nations who still have notoriously limited access to their material past. The conference team organised so-called sleep-in sessions to celebrate ‘awakenings’, which emphasised the continued immobility of objects held by former colonial powers. Most notable from the Object Lab was the metallurgist event sparked by Sumi Nachalne, head curator of the Forum S in Washington, who juxtaposed The Second Wave by El Anatsui (2019), Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini (1554), and the “Imperial State” Crown of the former United Kingdom, now with a glass replica of its largest diamond, کوه نور Koh-i-Noor, The Mountain of Light (2030). As an experiment, the objects were placed in proximity to see how they reacted as agents when exposed to each other. Readings on the molecular level tracing the agency or, as we now say, the longing of objects, displayed the birth of new chemical bonds to a fascinated audience.

In a retrospective panel on gender, ‘Him or Her Clothing: What’s That?’, participants examined archival records and ledgers of gendered clothing, reminding themselves that the early 2020s saw the beginning of what is now commonly known as androgynous or gender-fluid clothing. The panel examined former ideologies through an intersectional lens that took gender, patriarchy, colonisation, and sexuality into consideration. Diving into the inextricable connections between clothing and heritage, the panel discussed paradigm-shifting research from the 2020s that analysed the social implications of mainstream patriarchy and the gaping absence of gendered heritage studies.

Any conference would be incomplete without several book launches, and the 37th UFD did not disappoint. While key notes and panel discussions are the most important element, poster sessions and book launches give participants an opportunity to interact with researchers on their findings and to take home the beautifully haptic book or decorative poster describing research in full length formats, to sit with, muse over and perhaps add in ‘ted-snippets’ or ‘twit-sparks’ to their student’s reading list for the next semester.

For the purpose of this review, only four books shall be highlighted here, each of which addresses a distinct sub-field in the emerging discipline of forum studies.

Emiline Smith’s The End of Heritage Diplomacy, coming out in June 2057, addresses the bygone field of repatriation studies and the legal frameworks that were once essential to return museum legacies. In particular, chapter three on transit galleries and the opening chapter on ownership disputes are remarkable summaries of a time long since passed. The book also brings readers up-to-speed on the latest international legal framework in chapter five, where we delve into care, protection and the natural lifecycle of cultural heritage.
By contrast, Monalisa Maharjan’s recent publication Deface Embrace: Heritage Activism Meets Iconoclasm revisits the devastating Nepal Earthquakes of 2015, 2037, 2052, effectively chronicling the grassroot heritage activism in Nepal that brought a new generation of politicians to the forefront in South Asia. This phenomenon of rooted personalities in national elections rocked many politically corrupt countries in the 2030s, paving the way to new accountability. Deface Embrace also produces a substantial range of interviews with the first generation of Nepali politicians who were inspired by grassroot heritage activists.
Out next month, the volume Recreating Places of Memory: Milieu of Actors and Actions by Binita Magaiya tackles the fascinating topic of cultural amnesia. It asks how a person’s own perception of heritage influences memory. Taking the past 60 years into account, the study addresses how the invention of the Net (then known as the World Wide Web) changed the capacity, functionality, and operationality of the human brain, thereby altering centuries-old DNA and creating new biological possibilities for human recollection. Magaiya’s study is exemplary in tracing embodied mnemonic techniques while simultaneously visualising (through individual, miniature, 3D-printed heritage dioramas) human subjectivity with great attention to detail. The work is a fascinating and technically sophisticated study.
Finally, the last book we wish to highlight is Thirangie Jayatilake’s third volume in the series on Global Literature, titled Canon or Dream?. Readers are introduced to the history of publishing, with its white European gatekeepers who self-referenced knowledge within the bubble of the so-called early- and late-modern ‘publishing houses’. Her study, however goes beyond the narrow world view of the past, which is summarised under the short chapter ‘conform literature’, to move on to what was once termed atypical authorship. Jayatilake artfully demonstrates that this once-new paradigm in publishing has now become the de-facto face of world literature, after the movement #publishingpaidme changed the contractual terms between author and audience.

The conference organisers pushed the boundaries of thinking and behaviour at every juncture. Participants were encouraged to exercise at the Let’s Save What We Can gym, where the use of any machine resulted in electricity generation that offset the conference’s carbon footprint. Each ecologically sustainable meal was accompanied by placemats indicating the food’s cultural impact and its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, imperialism, and decolonisation. For those who preferred to fast-track their food intake with balanced protein infusions and less emotional baggage, many more opportunities were available during the traditional lunch slot. The self-guided tour of New Lagos on solar panel-powered air-peds was particularly popular due to the retro moped look of the vehicles. The architect and urban city mapper walking tour, with its visit to New Lagos’s floating apartments and gardens, was equally popular.

Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to those who attended the 37th UFD conference in New lagos and enriched us with your lively participation in panels, activities, and working groups. For those with further miles on the international travel contingent, we would like to remind you that the call for the forthcoming 38th UFD conference in Durban is already available.

The entrance to the Honeywell Auditorium was the site of many presentations in the UFD conference. It belongs to the building formerly known as the Lagos Business School, now the New Lagos Centre for Decolonial Theory and Praxis. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0

Please note that the events and published works described above are entirely fictional and constitute part of a speculative exercise on the part of the Heritage as Placemaking research team. All views expressed are entirely those of the researchers.

Between memories, mortals and immortals loom: Hiti of the Kathmandu Valley

May 24, 2022

Dr. Monalisa Maharjan is a research fellow with Heritage as Placemaking. She is interested in intangible heritage practices, heritage activism, and indigenous knowledge systems. Her project within HaP focuses on civic initiatives to restore and preserve hiti stepwells in the Kathmandu Valley.

Water sources and their accessibility have historically decided the rise and fall of civilizations around the world. The history of the origin of the Kathmandu Valley is rooted in a lake called the ‘Nagdaha’. As the lake drained, the subsequent aftermath formed a place for human habitation in the shape of a valley. Alongside the rivers, lakes, springs, and wetlands, the inhabitants of the valley, over time, developed a water system that would make its way to the inner cities.

Plastic ‘Ghee gallons’ in queue at Maru Hiti, Kathmandu.

Dry Hiti at Bagalamukhi, Patan.

Chysal Hiti filled with stupas and statues.

Statues protected by bars at Chysal Hiti, Patan.

Women pouring water on the Shiva Linga in Maru Hiti space.

People performing ‘shraddha’ at Maru Hiti space.

Statues at Yenga Hiti, Kathmandu.

Tanga Hiti façade being restored with Dacchi appa.

One such water system is the hiti, a traditional and organic water filtration technique for the preservation of, distribution of, and access to water. As such, hiti is both a carrier and a marker of a technologically accomplished civilization. For several centuries, the Kathmandu Valley’s population depended on hiti for water for drinking, cleaning, and ritual use.

The earliest hiti dates back to the fifth century. It is located in Hadigaun, one of the ancient cities in Kathmandu. The other hiti from this period that is still functional is Manga Hiti in Patan. The use of hiti water continued until the 1970s, when the drinking water reached houses via pipeline, easing households’ access to water. Understandably and expectedly, over time, people relied less on hiti to meet daily water needs.

However, hiti is not just a mere water source but also a place to worship, a symbol of purity, and a basis of religious harmony. Hiti is not a stand-alone ‘thing’: it is a richly assembled architectural and cultural space too; a space—rectangular or square—surrounded by several structures representing deities and religious symbols. The spouts of the hiti always appear in odd numbers, from a single spout to as many as five. The only even hiti space is one in Balaju bais dhara, which has twenty-two spouts.

The hiti’s physical space consists of several deities representing various religions. A single hiti space hosts the Shiva linga, statues of Buddha, Chaitya, Narayana, and many more living together. As such, hiti is also a space of diversity, accommodation, and co-existence. Hiti is also a form of vernacular architecture, rendering unique artistic expression and human imagination. For example, stone spouts are inscribed with figures of various animals, itself a representation of the sentient beings, underlined by the principle of co-existence, combining with the figment of the artists’ imagination.

However, hiti has also served as a marker of difference. In the stratified Newar society, water has always been considered a potent carrier of caste-based ‘purity’. The water perennially flowing out of hiti was considered to be ‘pure’. Therefore, hiti has, on the one hand, historically helped meet household-based water needs in the city. On the other hand, it has also made visible the politics of access and hierarchy based on notions of ‘purity’ linked to caste and ethnicity. It is one’s social location based on caste that determines where one stands in the long queue in front of the water spout on a typical Saturday morning, for example.

Particularly since the 1990s, hiti has been drying or being buried under ‘modern’ commercial buildings and business complexes. Despite this ‘erasure’, local residents who grew up using hiti not just as a water space but also as a playground, continue to retain fond memories of the rituals of everyday life built around hiti as a physical, social and cultural space.

The continued dilapidation of hiti is yet to make inroads into the public sphere as a matter of discourse that would foment critical, necessary, and even ‘radical’ conversations about ‘preservation’, among other concerns. Old pictures of hiti when juxtaposed against their contemporary state provide a stark spectacle depicting how far hiti has fallen as a functional and cultural space.

One of the ironies of modern-day hiti is that those that remain that are deemed to be ‘alive’ and preserved are said to be so because they somehow stand decorated—with dacchi appa, or glazed bricks. But something very crucial is missing. The hiti are standing, but they hardly breathe. They are dried off of the very thing that is meant to keep them ‘alive’, keep them preserved—water. They look aesthetically pleasing, but they have run dry. As a result, vibrant markers of active cultural life, such as people filling traditional water pots (gagri) from the hiti, taking a shower, the loitering and playing of children, and women exchanging pleasantries as they go about their everyday life, have all been displaced to the margins of our memories. Such memories are instead replaced by the modern-day realities, depicted in painstaking visuals of a long queue of white and yellow plastic gallons waiting to be filled out of water spouts that are drying by the minute—itself a stark reminder and depiction of the concrete plasticity of ‘modern life’ and the ambiguous irony of hyper-modernist ambitions such as the ‘smart city’.