I am a socio-cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on two areas of inquiry:
firstly, the emergence of an ethnic identity among the Tharu of Nepal and its
relationship to processes of state formation, and secondly, the relationship between
environmentalism and globalization in Sri Lanka. My research in Nepal since 1989 has led
to a number of published articles and a book, Many Tongues, One People: The Making of
Tharu Identity in Nepal, published by Cornell University Press in 2002. My current work
focuses on the study of environmental issues in South Asia. I recently completed the
editing of a book on cultural understandings of the environment in the Himalaya, which
examines how different cultural groups in the region understand the concept of
environment and what practical consequences result from those understandings for
bio-physical processes. I am now working on a book project on the development of
biodiversity conservation in Sri Lanka from colonial times to the present. 

I have been teaching at Macalester since 1995. 

EDUCATION: A.B., Dartmouth College, 1985; M.A., University of Chicago, 1987; Ph.D.,
University of Chicago, 1994 

Books

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Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya (2010)

For the last half-century, scholarship on human-environment relations in the Himalaya has focused on two...

 

Refereed Journals Edited

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"Special issue on the Tharu.", Himalayan Research Bulletin (1999)
 

Articles

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“The Cosmopolitanism of Environmental Activists in Sri Lanka.”, Nature and Culture (2008)

This paper examines the emergence in Sri Lanka of transcultural thinking about environmental issues as...

 

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"Shaping the tourist's gaze: Representing ethnic difference in a Nepali village.", The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2001)

A certain practice associated with the tourism industry in Nepal’s Chitwan district — the ‘village...

 

Book Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries

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From Big Game to Bio-Diversity: Middle-Class Environmental Activists and Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka, Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia (2010)
 

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Introduction, Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya (2010)
 

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"Introduction", Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal (2009)
 

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"Caste in India", Encyclopedia of the Modern World (2008)
 

Other Papers, Articles and Opinion Pieces

Book Reviews

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“Review of Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion.”, Studies in Nepali History and Society (2005)