NEPAL GEOGRAPHIES | 3

Introduction

NEPAL GEOGRAPHIES

Elsie Lewison, Galen Murton, Dinesh Paudel and Katharine Rankin

The sheer diversity and lively activity of Nepal geographies makes them
difficult to ignore. From the continuous uplift of mountains and itinerant
migration of river channels, to the feats of engineering on display in terraced
fields and remarkable histories of migration and trade across mountain
passes and floodplains, Nepal is a place where the “environment”—produced
through intertwined social and biophysical processes—rarely recedes as
passive “context.” Home to uniquely diverse and rapidly transforming
bio-physical systems, geopolitical encounters and indigenous relations of
knowledge and practice, Nepal has long offered a wealth of opportunities
to advance nuanced geographical understandings of the co-production of
socio-natural relations and affords rich grounds for transformative politics
and intersectional modes of resistance.
Geographers have played an important role in identifying and
conceptualizing socio-natural relations in Nepal and the Himalaya. With a
foot in both the social and physical sciences, geography as a field has been
particularly well-suited to tackling such questions (see Marston 2008).
Geographers’ embrace of diverse methodologies—from aerial photography
and land use surveys, to participatory mapping and ethnography—has
allowed them to identify gaps and discrepancies in data sets, challenge
scientific objectivism, embrace uncertainty, and turn a critical analytical
lens back on experts and institutions of scientific knowledge production
(e.g., Blaikie 1985; Thompson and Warburton 1985; Ives and Messerli
2003; Nightingale 2003, 2005; Ojha 2006; Nightingale and Ojha 2013; see
also Katz 1992; Nast 1994; Lawson 1995; Forsyth 2004; Robbins 2004).
Consideration of multiple spatial and temporal scales has also enabled a
relational approach to place and space—involving attention to how regions
and localities are produced through intersecting, multi-scalar processes and

Studies in Nepali History and Society 25(1): 3–14 June 2020

© Mandala Book Point
4 | ELSIE LEWISON, GALEN MURTON, DINESH PAUDEL AND KATHARINE RANKIN

flows (e.g., Gurung 1969, 1984, 2005; Sharma 1989, 2001; Metz 1991;
Adhikari 2001; Bhattarai 2003; Ghimire 2014; see also Massey 1991, 2004,
2012; Harvey 2012; Hart 2018). With this perspective, making sense of the
relationship between a farmer and a field, for example, requires attention
not only to immediate household dynamics and the local environment, but
also to histories of state displacement, transnational trade, and the collision
of tectonic plates over the course of millennia.
Insights from geographical research in Nepal have been influential in
advancing understandings and debates about environmental governance
and development in both regional and global arenas. While geography
departments in Nepal have faced challenges due to limited resources,
geographical scholarship has continued to grow and develop both within and
beyond academic institutions in Nepal, building on the strong foundations
laid by early geographical scholarship in the region and incorporating cutting
edge technologies and novel approaches to critical social and physical
science. Geographical approaches have played an important role in setting
research agendas, deconstructing dominant narratives, informing policy
approaches, and mobilizing politicized resistance in relation to a variety
of important issues including: economic development (e.g., Gurung 1969,
1984, 2005; Blaikie, Cameron and Seddon 1977; Byers 1987; Shrestha 1995,
1997; Bhattarai 2003; Sharma 2005, 2007); agriculture and environmental
degradation (e.g., Thompson and Warburton 1985; Karan and Iijima 1985;
Metz 1989, 1991; Shrestha 1995, 1997; Ives and Messerli 2003; Nightingale
2003, 2005; Ojha 2006; Ojha et al. 2008; Adhikari 2008; Bhattarai 2011;
Koirala 2017); population and migration (e.g., Shrestha 1985, 1989, 1990;
Subedi 1991; Adhikari 2001); and natural hazards (e.g., Ghimire 2011,
2017; Devkota, Doberstein and Nepal 2016; Byers et al. 2017; Gergan
2017; Rajaure and Paudel 2018).1 Our aim in the issue is to both take stock
and look to the future of Nepal and Himalayan geography. The issue offers
historical reflection, a snapshot of contemporary research, and discussions
of how Himalayan perspectives can continue to further debates on questions
that are of increasingly urgent global concern.

1
The examples and citations provided here are, of course, only a small sample
of extensive bodies of work. For detailed reviews of the history and scope of the
discipline of geography in Nepal see Panday (1998); Subedi and Poudel (2005);
Koirala (2008); Adhikari (2010); Subedi (2014); as well as Lewison and Murton,
this issue.
 NEPAL GEOGRAPHIES | 5

This special issue of SINHAS emerges out of ongoing conversations

within a Nepal and Himalayan geography community that has consolidated
over five years in the wake of the 2015 earthquakes.2 A moment of inspiration
can be traced to the immediate earthquake aftermath in the summer of 2015,
when some of the authors asked each other “where are the geographers,
and what are they doing?” Troubled by a discrepancy between the potential
application of geographic tools of analysis—from GIS and remote sensing
to place-based critical analysis and attention to localized manifestations of
geopolitics—and a dearth of relevant geographic scholarship in the months
following the earthquakes, we subsequently convened semi-annual meetings
of Nepal and Himalayan geographers at the Annual Meeting of the American
Association of Geographers and the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal
and the Himalaya. Building on our previous question in the context of the
earthquake emergency, members of the Nepal and Himalayan geography
community began not only to articulate and document geographers’ responses
to the earthquake, but also to reflect together on geography’s contributions
to Nepali and Himalayan studies and to the interface between social and
physical sciences more broadly.
In this special issue we focus on three key themes of interest across
the sub-fields of geography that emerged as common ground during those
meetings: sustainability, disaster and infrastructure. Each of these framings
of socio-material relations represents a terrain of scholarly debate and
political struggle. Sustainability, for example, appears to have emerged as
the paradigmatic organizing framework of our time. However, the salience
of the concept is made possible by fundamental ambiguities over what
is to be sustained, for how long, and by and for whom (see Lewison and
Murton; Paudel and Rankin). Approaches to disaster are similarly embedded
in questions of whose disasters count and how to properly account for
the layers of structural relations that produce the risks and vulnerabilities
contributing to the making of “natural” disasters (see Gladfelter; Ghimire;
Plachta). Infrastructure, meanwhile, has seen an explosive rise in popularity

2
Throughout the special issue the authors refer to the seismic events of 2015 as
“the 2015 earthquakes”—an expression which is intended to encompass both the
initial April 25, 2015 earthquake and its significant aftershocks on May 12. Seismic
events greater than 7.0 magnitude qualify as earthquakes, even if they are aftershocks
of a previous event. Both the April 25 and May 12 seismic events in Nepal were
greater than 7.0 in magnitude (see USGS 2015).
6 | ELSIE LEWISON, GALEN MURTON, DINESH PAUDEL AND KATHARINE RANKIN

over the last decade—as both a re-emergent development paradigm and a

subject of analysis. Infrastructure is deeply political—it cements (often
literally) certain visions of development and relations of privilege and
opportunity in place over extended periods of time. Analytical approaches
focused on infrastructure aim to bring these foundational structures into the
foreground and expose them to debate and contestation (see Lewison and
Murton; Gladfelter).
Our aim here is to capture some of the diversity of Nepal and Himalayan
geography’s contributions to the study of sustainability, infrastructure and
disaster. The articles range from broad surveys—of both a geographical
region (Ghimire; Lal) and the terrain of geographical scholarship in Nepal
(Lewison and Murton)—to intimate cases of communities (Gladfelter;
Plachta), to polemical essay (Paudel and Rankin) and a tribute to a preeminent
geographer of the region (Metz). The contributions offer a juxtaposition of
the variety of methods employed to explore these themes, encompassing the
layering of topographic, disaster risk and land use maps and quantitative
surveys, to qualitative interviews and oral accounts, focus groups, archival
and archaeological evidence, personal reflection, and ethnographic
observation. The articles also capture some of the geographical diversity
of Nepal itself, ranging from high mountain Himalayan borderlands where
Nepal meets the Tibetan Autonomous Region, to the Siwalik Hills, to a
major entrepôt city of the Tarai, and to the lower Karnali River Basin on
the Nepal-India border.
A throughline that cuts across the articles in this special issue is critical
attention to relations of power. The articles explore how uneven relations of
power play out within the conceptualization as well as the political economy
and ecology of sustainability, disaster and infrastructure. The contributions
include, for example, attention to how histories of displacement and
marginalization leave certain communities particularly vulnerable to floods
and landslides and to how infrastructures like embankments and roads take
shape through particular visions of development and the immediate interests
of powerful actors. Authors also speak to the ways in which relations of
power are reproduced and contested within the academic field of geography
and in practices and ideologies of development more broadly.
Following this Introduction, the special issue is comprised of four articles
and three commentaries. It begins with a broad survey of geographical
contributions on Nepal and the Himalaya from the mid-twentieth century to
 NEPAL GEOGRAPHIES | 7

the present by Elsie Lewison and Galen Murton. The contribution aims to
draw out several key features of geographical approaches to sustainability,
infrastructure, and disaster in Nepal and to discuss how Nepal-based
geographical work has contributed to broader debates on these themes
within and beyond Nepal. It charts early influential contributions to the
sustainability literature in relation to fears over rapid deforestation and soil
erosion, debates over the role of road building in development, and the
consolidation of literature on disaster, specifically in the wake of the 2015
earthquakes and recent extreme weather events likely linked to climate
change. The contribution concludes with a reflection on structural power
relations at work in the academic discipline of geography and argues that
understanding the full scope of geographical contributions in Nepal requires
looking beyond traditional academic spaces.
Motilal Ghimire offers an example of the robust geographical research
programs underway at Tribhuvan University. The author builds on extensive
research conducted over the course of his career to provide a geographical
survey of an important, ecologically sensitive and relatively understudied
region of Nepal—the Siwalik Hills. Ghimire employs an integrated cultural
landscape analysis to furnish insights for better understanding questions of
sustainability and risk in the region. The cultural landscape approach situates
changing strategies of resource management and adaptation to the landscape
within the context of broader geophysical and political-economic dynamics,
demonstrating how risk and vulnerability have been historically produced,
particularly for certain communities, through political interventions and
demographic shifts playing out in a geologically unstable and ecologically
sensitive region.
The next two articles focus on case studies in different geographical
contexts in Nepal. Both cases speak to key themes raised in Ghimire’s
contribution including the socio-natural production of risk and vulnerability
and the value of an integrated analysis attentive to both socio-cultural
and biophysical relations. However, they draw on significantly different
methodological approaches in addressing these themes. Sierra Gladfelter’s
article explores the construction of embankments by the Karnali River
Training Project (KRTP) on Rajapur Island—an understudied region in
Nepal’s southwestern alluvial floodplain on the Indian border. The article
adopts a political ecology approach to examine how floods have been
made disasters for certain communities in the lower Karnali Basin through
8 | ELSIE LEWISON, GALEN MURTON, DINESH PAUDEL AND KATHARINE RANKIN

processes of violent displacement and marginalization. Gladfelter further

argues that the infrastructural solution to flooding offered by the KRTP
exacerbates inequalities and unevenly distributes risk and protection. The
contribution demonstrates how uneven benefits and losses accrue both
in the process of constructing embankments and in their “aftermath,” as
infrastructural failures and side effects create new, everyday disasters for
those who live most intimately with the river and the infrastructure intended
to discipline and contain it.
Nadine Plachta offers a case study of the experiences of Himalayan
communities living in Lapchi Village of Dolakha district in the aftermath
of the 2015 earthquakes. The article similarly points to the production of
vulnerability and marginalization in the decades prior to the earthquakes, as
the community dealt with the shifting character and geography of Nepal’s
border with the People’s Republic of China and evolving socio-spatial
politics across the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Plachta also, however,
demonstrates how the Lapchi community actively negotiated their ambiguous
positionalities of citizenship and belonging in the post-earthquake context
to gain access to disaster relief. The article demonstrates the importance
of geographic perspectives for the emerging field of borderland studies
(in which Nepal scholarship features centrally) as well as anthropologies
of disaster, by illustrating how geographical marginalization and strategic
mobilizations of citizenship and belonging play into the making of disasters
and their aftermaths.
CK Lal’s commentary on Birganj takes a step back to provide historical
perspective on the development of the city. The author tells an important
story of an under-examined but prominent city with an explicit Madhesh
identity, within the context of an overall argument about the political
economic and geographic basis for urban primacy. The historical evolution
(and domination) of Birganj is thus presented in relation to the wider field of
Tarai/Madhesh cities and Hindu monarchy. Floods are revealed as powerful
agents in this history. Infrastructure also makes important appearances as the
city ebbs and flows with investments in railways, the hulàkã road, highways
and truck manufacturing. Thus the story of Birganj accounts for millennia of
socio-natural relations that routinely shape attempts by rulers to forge cities
under their name and patronage. At the same time, when the account turns to
the future, it makes a compelling and hopeful argument about how planners
(and a newly energized youth political constituency) can work to realize
 NEPAL GEOGRAPHIES | 9

the legacy of Birganj’s urban primacy, to provide the social and “creative”
infrastructures necessary to support the city’s role as a transportation and
communication hub.
In the second commentary, Paudel and Rankin build on the contributions
to the special issue to advance (and complicate) longstanding calls for
epistemic decolonization of studies in Nepali history and society. To do so
they engage historical-materialist approaches framed within core geographic
concepts of relationality and spatiality. The authors suggest an agenda
for decolonizing development in Nepal and Himalayan geographies that
builds on the practices and possibilities of relational autonomy—a principle
premised on a relational orientation to the politics of place that furnishes
“practical tactics for taking control over the terms on which a place is
connected to other localities and wider political economies” (Paudel and
Rankin).
John Metz’s concluding contribution provides further reflection on
historical trajectories of Nepal and Himalayan geography through a tribute
to an iconic geographer of the Himalaya, Pradyumna Prasad (Paul) Karan.
Metz situates Karan’s remarkable academic career—which encompassed
the study of regions ranging from the Himalayas, to Japan, to Kentucky
(US)—in an equally remarkable personal biography. Karan’s work on socio-
environmental landscapes played an important role in advancing debates
discussed by Lewison and Murton and the cultural landscape approach
that Ghimire employs. Metz also highlights the deep-seated racism that
Karan faced both in the institutions and scholarship of geography. His
experiences speak to a recent past that remains present in the foundations
(or infrastructures) of the discipline today.
This special issue is headed for publication at a moment when the
social and biophysical co-production of environments is visible in ways
that are historically unprecedented. As Kregg Hetherington (2019: 2) puts it,
“[T]he environmental objects that define our age, such as carbon emissions
and algae blooms [and, for that matter, COVID-19], are neither human nor
nonhuman, neither fully outside of us, nor fully inside.” The ever increasing
entanglement of social and “natural” biophysical processes demands new
ways of thinking about questions of sustainability, disaster and infrastructure.
If sustainability is often conceptualized as social processes that proceed
without fundamental disruption of the biophysical processes on which they
depend, how should we conceive of sustainability when the dividing lines
10 | ELSIE LEWISON, GALEN MURTON, DINESH PAUDEL AND KATHARINE RANKIN

between social and biophysical worlds are no longer meaningful? How

should we rethink disasters in light of uneven geographies of the production
of risk and vulnerability at a global scale? And what, as Hetherington (2019)
points out, does it mean for the study of infrastructure when globalized
infrastructures of production and consumption are producing the very
environments in which they are built?
There is a long and deep history of exploring such lines of questioning in
Nepal and the Himalaya. Geographers in particular have brought a versatile
toolkit of methodological and analytical approaches to their research that
have enabled movement and dialogue across social and physical sciences and
produced nuanced accounts of how regions and places are produced through
the articulation of multi-scalar processes and flows. Nepal and Himalayan
geographies continue to propel research agendas and advance broader
understandings of sustainability, disaster and infrastructure. At the same
time, the scholarly community also continues to grapple with the uneven
geographies of power and privilege, and ever-present pasts, within the field
today. In this special issue, we aim to provide a window into this rich world
of inquiry, critical reflexivity and political possibility to demonstrate why
Nepal and Himalayan geographies matter more now than ever.

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Biographical Notes
Elsie Lewison is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of
Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. Email: elsie.lewison@
mail.utoronto.ca

Galen Murton is an Assistant Professor of Geographic Science in the

School for Integrated Sciences at James Madison University, US. Email:
murtongb@jmu.edu

Dinesh Paudel is an Associate Professor in the Sustainable Development

Department at Appalachian State University, US. Email: paudeld@appstate.edu

Katharine Rankin is a Professor in the Department of Geography and

Planning at the University of Toronto. Email: k.rankin@utoronto.ca