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The invention of nature: state-building and environment-making in the extended Himalaya
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Gyawali, Amulya (2023) The invention of nature: state-building and environment-making in the extended Himalaya. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3965416
Abstract
“The Invention of Nature: State-Building and Environment-Making in the Extended Himalayas” examines the relationship between state-building and the natural environment, particularly the way in which these processes are mediated and registered in cultural texts. Exploring the links between the material and discursive production of various environments, the thesis proposes the ‘invention of nature’ as a singular framework for understanding how various material environment-making processes and discursive environmental imaginaries are negotiated and contested in the thesis’ chosen sites of study. Using this framework of the invention of nature, the thesis argues that cultural production does not merely substantiate the historical processes of environment-making, but are themselves historically and ideologically produced, and in turn, help to epistemologically order the environments studied in the thesis.
Proposing the ‘extended’ Himalayas as its geographical scope, the thesis gestures at a realignment of the academic boundaries of South Asian and postcolonial studies by introducing Nepal – hitherto under-studied in the above fields – to a comparative framework with northern India to study the shared geographies of the two countries. Thus, the thesis’ four chapters are divided into four geographic sites in the extended Himalayas: the Terai plains, the national park, the Himalayan mid-hills, and the high Himalaya. In its comparative study of Indian and Nepali cultural production, the thesis further argues that despite Nepal’s informal relationship with colonialism and subsequent academic marginalisation, it is not only influenced by and embedded into the history of the region and the modern world-system, but it is precisely Nepal’s peculiar history of uneven development that contributes new observations to the fields of postcolonial and South Asia studies.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Nation-building -- Nepal -- History, Nepal -- Colonization, Nepal -- Boundaries -- India, India -- Boundaries -- Nepal, Nepal -- Foreign relations -- India, India -- Foreign relations -- Nepal, Himalaya Mountains Region -- Civilization, Himalaya Mountains Region -- History, Human ecology -- Himalaya Mountains Region | ||||
Official Date: | February 2023 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Mukherjee, Pablo ; Niblett, Michael | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Chancellor’s International Scholarship | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 156 pages | ||||
Language: | eng |
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