Publications

Books & Edited Volumes

•    Pathways to Power: The Domestic Politics of South Asia.  Co-edited with Anita M. Weiss. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014.  South Asia edition: Hyderabad, India: Orient BlackSwan, 2014.
Reviewed in Contemporary South Asia (2015) * Studies in Indian Politics (2016) 

•    The Tarai: History, Society, Environment.  Lalitpur: Himal Books, 2011.

•    Ethnicity, Inequality and Politics in Nepal.  Co-edited with Mahendra Lawoti.  Lalitpur: Himal Books, 2010.

•    Dalits of Nepal: Towards Dignity, Citizenship and Justice.  Lalitpur: Himal Books, 2010.

•    Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya. London & New York: Routledge, 2010.  Routledge Paperback edition 2012; South Asia edition (Manohar) 2012.
Reviewed in EBHR (2010) * Mountain Research and Development (2011) * Environment and Society (2012)

•    Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Reviewed in H-Asia (2003) * Asian Ethnicity (2003) * Journal of Asian Studies (2003) * L'homme : revue française d'anthropologie (2003) * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (2004) * Studies in Nepali History and Society (2004) * American Ethnologist (2005) * Reviews in Anthropology (2007) * Contributions to Indian Sociology (2009) 

Journals edited

•    Editor, Himalaya, Vols. 27 to 32

•    Guest Editor, Himalaya, Vol. 25, 2005.

•    Guest editor, “The royal assassinations.” (A symposium on the murders of Nepal’s royal family). Himalayan Research Bulletin 21(1), 2001.

•    Guest Editor, Himalayan Research Bulletin Special issue on the Tharu, Vol. 19 (2), 1999.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters  

•         “The Fate of a Text: András Höfer’s Study of the Muluki Ain and the Limitations of South Asian Area Studies.” Himalaya 42 (1): 12-27, 2023.  

An earlier version of this paper was published in Dev Pathak, ed., Another South Asia: Questions, Rhetoric and Quest. Delhi: Primus Books, 2018.

•       “British planters and the origins of conservation in colonial Ceylon.” Journal of Asian Studies 82 (1): 5-24, 2023.

•        “Tharu as tribal, Tharu as caste: Reflections on colonial categories and the making of a border district in Nepal.” Himalaya 41 (2): 6-21, 2022.

• “The origins of ornithology in nineteenth century Sri Lanka.” In R. Kannan, ed., Sri Lanka Special. Indian Birds Monograph 5, pp. 57-70, 2022.

• "A Bird in the Bush:  Dillon Ripley, Sálim Ali and the transformation of ornithology in Sri Lanka.” Nehru Memorial Museum & Library Occasional Papers, new series 59, 2015.

• “The Constitutional Basis of Authoritarianism in Sri Lanka.” South Asia Journal 7, 2013.

• “Tharu-State Relations in Nepal and India.”  Himalaya 29 (1-2): 19-28, 2010.  Reprinted in The Tarai: History, Society, Environment, 2011.

•    “Plain Tales from the Field: Reflections on Fieldwork in Three Cultures.” In H. L. Seneviratne, ed., The Anthropologist and the Native: Essays for Gananath Obeyesekere.  Firenze: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2011.

•    “From Big Game to Bio-Diversity: Middle-Class Environmental Activists and Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka.”  In David Gellner, ed., Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia.  New Delhi: Sage, 2010.

•    "Village Walks: Tourism and Globalization among the Tharu of Nepal." With Kate Bjork. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. Boston: Pearson, 2009. [Reprint, 2012].

•    “The Cosmopolitanism of Environmental Activists in Sri Lanka.” Nature and Culture 3 (1): 98-114, 2008.

•    “The Tharus of Chitwan, Nepal.” In Barbara Brower and Barbara Rose Johnson, eds.  Disappearing Peoples of South and Central Asia.  Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007.

•    “Tharu ra rajya: prajatantra, rajya nirman ra janajati pahican.” (“The Tharus and the State: Democracy, State Building and Ethnic Identity Formation.” In Nepali).  In Basant Thapa and Mohan Mainali, eds., Mades: samasya ra sambhavna.  (Madesh [Tarai]: Problems and Prospects.).  Lalitpur, Nepal: Social Science Baha, 2006.

•    “What’s in a name? Aryans, Dravidians, and other myths of Sri Lankan identity.” In Neluka Silva, ed., The Hybrid Island: Culture Crossings and the Invention of Identity in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association, 2001 and London: Zed Books, 2002. * Reprinted in Kamala Visweswaran, ed., Perspectives on modern South Asia: a reader in culture, history, and representation. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011

•    “Shaping the Tourist’s Gaze: Representing ethnic difference in a Nepali Village.”  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7 (3): 527-543, 2001.

•    “The shaman and the priest: Ghosts, death and ritual specialists in Tharu society.”  Himalayan Research Bulletin 19 (2): 1-12, 1999.

•    “The Modernizing Matwalis: Caste, Class, and Status among the Tharus of Chitwan.”  In Harald O. Skar, ed., Nepal: Tharu and Tarai Neighbors.  Bibliotheca Himalayica, Series III, v. 16.  Kathmandu: EMR, 1999.

•    “Land, Labor and Ethnic Relations: Tharu-Brahmin Co-existence in two Inner Tarai districts in Nepal.”  In Multiculturalism: Modes of co-existence in South and Southeast Asia.  Washington, DC: The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, USA, 1999.

•    “Modernization, the State, and the Construction of a Tharu Identity in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies 57 (3): 749-773, 1998.

•    “Response” (to Ashis Nandy, “South Asian Politics: Modernity and the Landscape of Clandestine and Incommunicable Selves”). Macalester International. Vol. 4, 1997.

•    “The Tax-Man Cometh: The impact of revenue collection on subsistence strategies in Chitwan Tharu Society.” Studies in Nepali History & Society 1 (1): 5-35, 1996.

•    “The Making of a Historical Consciousness: from the Mahavansa to Sinhalese Nationalism.”  Chicago Anthropology Exchange, 16: 45-62, 1987.

Encyclopedia entries

•    “Tharu: The Chitwan Tharu Religion.” Entry in Marine Carrin, ed., Encyclopedia of the Religions among the Indigenous People of South Asia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021.

•    “Caste systems.” Entry in Peter N. Stearns et al, eds., Encyclopedia of the Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

•    “Caste in India.” Entry in Peter N. Stearns et al, eds., Encyclopedia of the Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

•    “Caste and State, India and Nepal.”  Entry in Margaret Mills, Peter J. Claus, and Sarah Diamond, eds., South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia, pp. 96-99.  New York and London: Routledge, 2003.

•    “Malignant Spirits, Nepal.” Entry in Margaret Mills, Peter J. Claus, and Sarah Diamond, eds., South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia, pp. 374-375. New York and London: Routledge, 2003.

Book Reviews

•    Caste: the origins of our discontents. By Isabel Wilkerson. World History Connected 20 (1), 2023. 

•    An Endangered History: Indigeneity, Religion, and Politics on the Borders of India, Burma, and Bangladesh. By Angma Dey Jhala. Journal of Asian Studies, 80 (1): 9-11, 2021.

•    Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi identities between Nepal and India, by Sara Shneiderman. Studies in Nepali History and Society, 20 (1): 189-192, 2016.

•    Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism, by Srirupa Roy.  Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 33: 172-175, 2010

•    Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities, by Nira Wickramasinghe, and Surveying and Mapping in Colonial Sri Lanka, by Ian J. Barrow.  The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 47 (2): 261-89, 2010.

•    Ethnic Warfare in Sri Lanka and the UN Crisis by William Clarance. American Anthropologist, 110 (3): 385-386, 2008.

•    The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820-1858, edited by David M. Waterhouse.  Journal of Asian Studies, 65 (2):437-38, 2006.  Reprinted in Himalaya, 27 (1&2): 79-80, 2007.

•    Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, edited by Michael Hutt. Studies in Nepali History and Society, 10 (1): 171-176, 2005.

•    “Val kota gini läma: shri lankave vidyava pilibanda kätte udälle vivaranayak.”  Sinhala translation of item below.  Patitha, 3: 278-284, 2005 (published by the Colombo Foundation in Sri Lanka).

•    “Slash and Burn: A Swidden Critique of Sri Lankan Anthropology.” Review of Anthropologizing Sri Lanka: A Eurocentric Misadventure, by Susantha Goonatilake.  Current Anthropology, 45(5): 718-720, 2004.  Reprinted in The Island (daily newspaper, Colombo, Sri Lanka), February 8th, 2006.

•    Daughters of the Tharu: Gender, Ethnicity, Religion, and the Education of Nepali Girls, by Mary Ann Maslak. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 35 (2), June 2004.

•    The Chitwan Tharus in Southern Nepal: An Ethnoecological Approach, by Ulrike Müller-Böker. Contributions to Nepalese Studies, 30 (2), 2003.

•    On the Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Caste in Nepal, by Mary Cameron. Himalayan Research Bulletin, 21 (2): 98-100, 2001.

•    Relocated Lives: Displacement and Resettlement within the Mahaweli Project, Sri Lanka, by Birgitte Refslund Sørensen.  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (2): 358, 2000.

•    Exploring Confrontation: Sri Lanka—Politics, Culture and History, by Michael Roberts.  American Ethnologist 25 (3): 527-28, 1998.

•    Theft of an Idol, by Paul Brass.  Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1): 248-249, 1998.

•    Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka, edited by James Brow and Joe Weeramunda.  American Ethnologist 24 (2): 498-499, 1997.

•    Language, Religion and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka, by K.N.O.Dharmadasa.  Anthropological Linguistics 38 (3): 588-590, 1996.

•    A field of one’s own: Gender and land rights in South Asia, by Bina Agarwal. Chicago South Asia Newsletter 20 (2): 9-10, 1996.

•    J.R. Jayawardene of Sri Lanka:  A Political Biography. Vol. 1: The First Fifty Years, by K.M. de Silva and Howard Wriggins.  Chicago South Asia Newsletter, 13 (3): 8-9, 1989.

•    The Breakup of Sri Lanka:  The Tamil-Sinhalese Conflict, by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson.  Chicago South Asia Newsletter, 13 (2): 8-9, 1989.

Miscellaneous 

•    “Introduction” to Frederick Gaige, Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal.  Second Edition.  Kathmandu: Social Science Baha/Himal Books, 2009.

•  “Margaret Oldfield’s Description of a Royal Wedding in Nepal.” Himalaya 29 (1&2): 69-74, 2010.

•  “Srilaṅkālī saṃvaidhānik vikāsko path.” [Lessons of Sri Lankan Constitutional Development.  In Nepali]. Himāl Khabar Patrikā, December 1-15, 2009.

•  “Comment” on Anne Rademacher, “When is Housing an Environmental Problem? Reforming Informality in Kathmandu.”  Current Anthropology 50 (4): 525-526, 2009.

•    “Road to peace in North isn’t through ‘defence colonies.’” The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) February 15, 2009.

•    “Area Studies, Regional Worlds: A White Paper for the Ford Foundation.” Co-authored with Arjun Appadurai, Jacqueline Bhabha and Steven Collins.  The University of Chicago: The Globalization Project, 1997.

•    “Regional Worlds: Rethinking Area Studies.” Colloquy 14 (1): 12-14, 1997. [Macalester College Faculty Newsletter]

•    “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Robert Redfield and the development of language and area studies at the University of Chicago.”  University of Chicago: Regenstein Library, 1992.