Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and the Productions of Place in Kathmandu: A Spatial Ethnography of Thamel

Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and the Productions of Place in Kathmandu: A Spatial Ethnography of Thamel
Benjamin Linder

Summary

This dissertation explores the process through which transnationalism, cultural transformation, and urban space are mutually constituted in the Global South— specifically, in the neighborhood of Thamel in Kathmandu, Nepal. Thamel offers an ideal site to theorize the nexus that links place and subjectivity within a context of accelerating global mobilities. For diversely situated Nepalis, the neighborhood is a zone of ambivalent exception, where a variety of transgressive practices are sanctioned, enacted, and contested. First, this ethnography theorizes the creative practices through which Nepalis construct new cosmopolitanisms as a means of contesting global marginality and normative social roles. Second, it documents the reasons that these cultural shifts instantiated specifically in Thamel, and how the space itself reproduces these transformations. Finally, this project highlights the agency of Nepalis as they increasingly circulate across transnational diasporic networks, thereby (re)producing the socio-spatial changes taking place in Thamel. Since 1990, sharp increases in foreign media consumption, economic opportunity, and transnational mobility have drastically transformed Kathmandu. The practices that are sanctioned in Thamel—e.g., alcohol consumption, women’s use of public space, beef eating—fundamentally challenge notions of “traditional” Nepalipan (“Nepaliness”). This project develops a spatial theory of such cultural changes to understand (1) the way particular places reflect and expand new cultural horizons, and (2) the active role of Nepalis in such transformations. Thamel is a hub through which young Nepalis spatialize transnational mobilities, and it is a space that actively (re)produces emergent transformations in the subjective, cultural, and urban landscapes of contemporary Kathmandu. Part I details the histories, discourses, and cultural politics surrounding the meaning of Thamel. Part II ethnographically explores the spatial production of various cosmopolitanisms. Finally, Part III considers Thamel’s shifting linkages to other sites, both within Kathmandu and across the transnational Nepali diaspora.

Author

Benjamin Linder

PhD defended at

University of Illinois at Chicago

Specialisation

Social Sciences

Region

Global Asia (Asia and other parts of the World)
Nepal

Theme

Urban / Rural
Globalisation
Diasporas and Migration