Abstract

Studies focusing on infrastructures have predominantly examined the presence of the state (Carse, 2014; Harvey and Knox, 2015; Von Schnitzler, 2017). However, this top-down approach to analyzing infrastructural development has obscured the ways in which individuals value land and how that relationship evolves. While anti-colonial studies emphasize the significance of land-based resistance for colonized peoples, these studies are somewhat marginalized within the anthropology of infrastructure (Fanon 1961; Coulthard 2014; Estes 2019). The road construction project, which fortifies infrastructural links between Nepal and China, traverses Indigenous Dolpo territories and is predominantly managed by government and non-government officials from high-caste groups who espouse ideas of progress that engender inequalities in Dolpo. In collaboration with the Dolpo community, the project explores the following questions: How does infrastructure sustain a Brahmanical capitalist state? How do local populations respond to and resist the caste-based regimes of land ownership? Drawing theoretical insights from the studies on enduring colonial impacts on Indigenous communities, anthropology of infrastructure, political ecology, and caste studies, it examines: (1) how state-led infrastructure development sustains settler colonialism; (2) how values and practices around Indigenous lands change because of state infrastructures; and (3) how state infrastructures shape Indigenous land collectives. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Nepal, my principal assertions are: Road construction sustains the Brahmanical capitalist state and its political order on Indigenous lands. Indigenous peoples actively reaffirm their own processes of world-making to oppose the prevailing political order that negates Indigenous sovereignty. Ethnography involving interviews, participant observation, case studies, and surveys of the community and its various organizations centers on indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and experiences. This research aims to foreground the analysis of the evolving meanings, valuations, and relations to the land, providing an in-depth understanding of the local disparities precipitated by the ongoing road construction and its impact on land tenure and valuation. The goal is not to reduce every process to the land, but rather to use land valuation – both economic and semiotic – as a means to understand how indigenous meanings, practices, and strategies of land usage are linked to a broader universe of historical and material conditions in which Dolpo developed and continues to do so. This study is committed to documenting the understanding and expression of Dolpo's struggles for survivance, dignity, and rights in response to historically ingrained caste, class, and ethnic discrimination. This research will contribute to the scant understanding of how different social groups experience the landlord state and enact new meanings and practices in an attempt to keep state appropriation at a distance.

Committee Chair

Geoff Childs

Committee Members

Bret Gustafson; Nyima Choekhortshang; Samuel Shearer; Shanti Parikh

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Anthropology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

8-19-2025

Language

English (en)

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Available for download on Wednesday, August 18, 2027

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