TY - JOUR
T1 - Farewell to the Bagmati civilisation
T2 - Losing riverscape and nation in Kathmandu
AU - Rademacher, Anne
N1 - Funding Information:
Anne Rademacher teaches in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Recent publications include: with M. R. Dove and others, The Global Mobilisation of Environmental Concepts: Problematising the Western-Non-Western Divide. In H. Selin (Ed.), Nature across Cultures: Non-Western Views of Nature and the Environment. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Forthcoming publications include: A ‘Chaos’ Ecology: Democratisation and Urban Environmental Decline in Kathmandu. In M. Lawoti (Ed.), Contentious Politics and Democratisation in Nepal. London: Sage; Marking Remembrance: Nation and Ecology in Two Riverbank Pillars in Kathmandu. In D. Walkowitz & L. M. Knauer (Eds), Narrating the Nation in Public Spaces: Memory, Race and Empire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Restoration and Revival: Remembering the Bagmati Civilisation. In A. Guneratne (Ed.), Constructing Nature at the Roof of the World: Cultural Understandings of Environment in High Asia. London: Routledge. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Kathmandu between 1997 and 2003 on competing constructions of Bagmati and Bishnumati riverscape degradation and restoration. Research conducted in August 1999 and June·August 2000 was supported by the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund, the Yale Centre for International and Area Studies, the Tropical Resources Institute at Yale and the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies. Research conducted from November 2001 to April 2002 and October 2002 to January 2003 was supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Yale Centre for International and Area Studies Henry Heart Rice Research Fellowship. Correspondence to: Anne Rademacher, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, 41 East 11th Street, Room 723, New York, NY 10003, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
PY - 2007/6
Y1 - 2007/6
N2 - The Kathmandu reaches of the Bagmati River are widely characterised as severely degraded. This article explores the rhetorical life and death of the concept of a 'Bagmati civilisation': a particular configuration of history, cultural identity and river ecology espoused by a prominent Nepali river restorationist. Following the 2001 imposition of a state of emergency in Nepal, the architect of the Bagmati civilisation idea declared that the civilisation, and by extension the river's ecological health, may never be restored. This rhetorical gesture illuminates connections between the 'life' of an urban riverscape and the cultural idea of the state and the nation.
AB - The Kathmandu reaches of the Bagmati River are widely characterised as severely degraded. This article explores the rhetorical life and death of the concept of a 'Bagmati civilisation': a particular configuration of history, cultural identity and river ecology espoused by a prominent Nepali river restorationist. Following the 2001 imposition of a state of emergency in Nepal, the architect of the Bagmati civilisation idea declared that the civilisation, and by extension the river's ecological health, may never be restored. This rhetorical gesture illuminates connections between the 'life' of an urban riverscape and the cultural idea of the state and the nation.
KW - Bagmati River
KW - Kathmandu
KW - National Identity
KW - Restoration
KW - Urban Ecology
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U2 - 10.1080/14608940701333746
DO - 10.1080/14608940701333746
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:34249658955
SN - 1460-8944
VL - 9
SP - 127
EP - 142
JO - National Identities
JF - National Identities
IS - 2
ER -