Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal: Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning

Description

What is education, and who counts as an 'educated person' amidst competing religious, political, and pedagogical ideologies, which have shaped contemporary educational practices and institutions in Nepal? How have social and political changes, an increasing commodification of education, a continued reliance on foreign aid, and expanded geographical horizons contributed to a reshaping of the educational landscape of Nepal and thereby altered, opened up, and closed avenues of learning available to the Nepali people? Grounded in the intersection between anthropology, sociology, and development studies, and based on rich ethnographic evidence, the essays in this edited volume illuminate educational transformations and avenues of learning in the context of wider social and political changes in Nepal. They capture diverse and competing educational experiences and trajectories; examine the process of construction and transmission of knowledge in different sites within and beyond institutions of formal education; and explore the interconnections between education, state, and society.

About the authors:

Karen Valentin, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Anthropology, School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She completed her PhD in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen in 2002 and has conducted research in Nepal, India, Vietnam, and Denmark within the fields of education, migration, urban life, and youth since the mid-1990s. Her research has focused on the role of education in interrelated processes of geographical and social mobility in the context of conflict-related migration from Nepal to India and in student migration from Nepal to Denmark. She has been engaged in various research activities in collaboration with Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University as well as interdisciplinary research on public finance in education in Nepal.

Uma Pradhan is Departmental Lecturer, South Asian Studies, University of Oxford, UK. She holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford and uses ethnographic methods to explore social meanings of education and the larger processes of state-society interaction in its production.

Table of contents

Chapter 1   Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal: Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning by Karen Valentin and Uma Pradhan

Chapter 2   Nepal's New Rich: Class, Differentiation, and Elite Education in Kathmandu by Todd John Wallenius

Chapter 3   The Burden of Inherited Aspirations: Education as a Positional Good by Shrochis Karki

Chapter 4   Navigating Class Through Education: Urban Poor Families's Choice of Schools by Reidun Faye

Chapter 5   Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Dalit Experiences of Primary and Secondary Education in West-Central Nepal by Krishna P. Adhikari and David N. Gellner

Chapter 6   A Buddhist Educated Person: 'Modern Education' in the Monastery by Cameron David Warner

Chapter 7   Drawing Out Migration: Rural to Urban Transitions and the Re-imagined Futures of Himalayan School Children by Sarah Burack, Geoff Childs, Elizabeth A. Quinn, Jhangchuk Sangmo, Nyima Sangmo, and Jean Hunleth

Chapter 8   Moving to Learn: New Horizons of Nepali Education by Karen Valentin

Chapter 9   Contesting Caste at University Sites: Dalits at Nepal's Universities - Inequality, Belonging, Transformations by Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka

Chapter 10   (Re)constructing a 'Good' School: Materials, Affects, and Meanings of Education in Post-earthquake Nepal by Uma Pradhan

Chapter 11   Locating Multilingual Education in Nepal: Dhimal Language as Local and National? by Miranda Weinberg