Mark Turin
Biographic Data
| ID | 81127 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Turin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Turin |
| SIGNATURE | TURIN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2262-0986 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
I stumbled when I saw: Fieldwork, fallibility, and the politics of being wrong
What does it mean for an anthropologist to be wrong? This essay takes the question seriously in two registers at once: the everyday mistakes of fieldwork, from mistranslating a greeting to misreading a shaved head as a sign of mourning, and the deeper entitlement through which our discipline claimed authority over other people's languages and lives. Drawing on three decades of learning Nepali and documenting Thangmi with community partners in Nep…
Results from the Linguistic Survey of Sikkim
This article re-examines a 2005-2006 school-based survey of language use across Sikkim, a multilingual Himalayan state in northeastern India. 16,527 students in classes VIII–XII from 105 schools answered questions about languages used with grandparents, parents, and siblings, and which they considered to be their “mother tongue”. Two patterns emerge from our reanalysis. Heritage languages are still used with elders, showing family-based maintenan…
Personal cinema, public politics: A conversation with Asha Magrati and Deepak Rauniyar about film-making in Nepal
This interview with actor-producer Asha Magrati and writer-director-producer Deepak Rauniyar situates their partnership in Nepali cinema and the transnational circuits that increasingly shape production and reception. From early collaborations such as Highway (2012) and White Sun (2016) to the more recent Pooja, Sir (2024), they explore how caste, Madhesi marginalisation, colourism and linguistic hierarchy inform both narrative and form. In this …
What Unicode Means to the Humanities
Dancing Down the Eyelashes of the Sun: Nuxalk Governance, Language, and the Museum Public
This review suggests that Nuxalk Strong: Dancing Down the Eyelashes of the Sun reframes the ethnographic gallery as a site of protocol rather than as a trophy case. Co‐curated by Snxakila—Clyde Tallio (Nuxalk Nation) and Jennifer Kramer (UBC MOA), the exhibition centers law, lineage, and language to present belongings and supernatural beings as ongoing relations. Contemporary makers stand beside ancestral treasures; Nuxalk Radio and interactive b…
Conversations on Dictionaries: The Universe in a Book
How did dictionaries come to be? When and how did they originate in a specific language? Who was involved in that origin story? How have they evolved over time? What is the tension between scholarly and commercial, and between prescriptive and descriptive, dictionaries? What is the politics behind each dictionary? And what is the connection between dictionaries and nation-building? This fascinating book has the answers. It brings together a colle…
The Ebbs and Flows of te reo Māori Use in New Zealand English
In this article, we associate the use of te reo Māori in vernacular New Zealand English with political alignments and transformations in Aotearoa New Zealand. The volume and direction of this lexical borrowing – from Māori into vernacular New Zealand English – is as unique as it is counterintuitive: lexical borrowing most typically involves words from dominant, majority languages being loaned into and shared with subdominant, Indigenous languages…
Navigating patriarchy: Aspects of working-class Nepali masculinity through a visual frame
Climing Up, Thinking With, Feeling Through: Ritual, Spirituality and Ecoscience in Northwestern Nepal
This paper examines local knowledge, perceptions, and responses to changing climes in the Trans-Himalayan region of Dolpa in Nepal. Rooted within the environmental humanities and shaped by emerging understandings of faith-based ecospirituality, our research partnership focuses on the experiences of the indigenous Tarali Magar people of Gumbatara and neighbouring Shaharatara in the Tichurong valley. Through place-based engagements and drawing on v…
Some approaches to the study of oral poetry
This chapter explores the various approaches to the study of oral poetry, highlighting the influence of entrenched assumptions and theoretical models on the field. To properly assess claims about oral poetry, it is essential to understand the underlying assumptions behind these approaches. The chapter examines four major approaches to oral poetry: romantic and evolutionist theories, the Finnish historical-geographical school, sociological approac…
Building a Multilingual Republic: An Interview with Dr. Lava Deo Awasthi, Founding Chair of Nepal’s Language Commission
This contribution is an edited version of a wide-ranging conversation between linguistic anthropologist and past co-editor of HIMALAYA, Mark Turin, and Lava Deo Awasthi, the first Chairperson of Nepal's Language Commission. In the course of the interview, Turin and Awasthi discuss the Commission's role and establishment, Awasthi's appointment to the position of Chairperson, his intellectual training and administrative preparation for the task, an…
Lincing learners to digital literacy: Supporting social integration and English language learning during Covid-19
Many newcomers to Canada experience significant difficulties adjusting to life in their new community, with few more challenging than learning English. While Canada’s Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program suggests a pathway to social integration, ideologies pertaining to language and diversity that inform the LINC program can lead to the assimilation and marginalization of immigrant and refugee newcomers. The disruptions tha…
Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné
This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention t…
Rádios Indígenas: Brazil’s Indigenous Language Broadcasting Landscape
This article offers a critical review of Brazil's Indigenous language broadcasting landscape, from traditional analogue transmission to podcasts and online radio. The study introduces Brazil's Indigenous linguistic diversity and locates the current vitality of Indigenous languages within Brazil's constitutional provisions and broadcasting legislation that both support and impede programming in languages other than Portuguese. Following an assessm…
A Review of Three Recent Dictionaries of Indigenous Languages Spoken in South America
In this review essay, we compare three recent dictionaries of Indigenous languages spoken in South America. The review covers two print dictionaries—one of which is trilingual (Quechua, Spanish and English) and the other the second edition of a bilingual Q’eqchi’-English dictionary—and a bilingual, digital dictionary hosted online (Wichí-Spanish). The structure of this review essay is as follows: first, we offer a brief introduction to each of th…
Indigenous language use in museum spaces
In the summer of 2020, two museums in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, simultaneously hosted art exhibitions by Indigenous artists. The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) hosted an exhibition of works by Shuvinai Ashoona, an Inuk artist part of the Dorset Fine Arts Co-operative, based in Kinngait, Nunavut. At the same time, the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) hosted an exhibition of the work of Kent Monkman, a Cree artist known for exploring themes of …
Swargajyoti Gohain, Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands: Culture, politics, place
The people of Monyul, a Tibetan Buddhist cultural region in west Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India, hold aspirations for local autonomy. In this sophisticated monograph, anthropologist Swargajyoti Gohain explores the many textures of Monpa ambitions as these are ‘overlaid by transregional imaginations that are pan-Himalayan in nature’ (p14). Rooted in long-term fieldwork in Tawang and West Kameng districts, Gohain’s text is one of continued inte…
Teaching Indigenous Language Revitalization over Zoom
In this teaching reflection, co-authored by an instructor and a teaching assistant, we consider some of the unanticipated openings for deeper engagement that the “pivot” to online teaching provided as we planned and then delivered an introductory course on Indigenous language documentation, conservation, and revitalization from September to December 2020. We engage with the fast-growing literature on the shift to online teaching and contribute to…
Indigenous Lexicography: A Review of Recent Dictionaries and Works Relating to Lexicography
In this review essay, we compare five recent publications relating to dictionary work with Indigenous languages. The review covers three dictionaries, one monograph about lexicography in service of Indigenous language revitalization and the second volume of a two-volume dictionary-cum-encyclopedia. The structure of this review essay is as follows: following a brief introduction to each of the languages covered in these five publications, we inclu…
Heritage languages and language as heritage: The language of heritage in Canada and beyond
This article draws on recent discourses surrounding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and its relationship to language preservation, practice, and revitalisation to propose that language be considered a form and practice of heritage in and of itself, not merely a vehicle for the conveyance of ICH. As such, language can serve as a bridge between the often-parallel tracks of tangible and intangible heritage, helping arrive at an understanding of h…
Introduction: Colonial Humanities and Criticality
Starting from the premise that the humanities are still in urgent need of being decolonized and deprovincialized, this forum, titled “The Rise and Decline of ‘Colonial Humanities,’” offers insights into the development of the humanities disciplines in what are often referred to as “area studies” (a field itself subject to criticism) since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The forum’s perspective on “colonial humanities” acknowledges the vi…
Locating Criticality in the Lexicography of Historically Marginalized Languages
In this contribution, we address a practice in which many field linguists working with endangered, Indigenous, and underresourced languages participate: the creation of a dictionary. In such lexicographical projects, there is an urgent need for language workers to become more aware of their own ideological and intellectual baggage and to explore how such projects can contribute to challenging harmful colonial research practices. Informed by long-…
Materials for the Study of Gurung Pe, by Simon Strickland
Volumes 86 and 87 of the Harvard Oriental Series form a magnum opus in the truest sense, the culmination of decades of research and granular analysis by anthropologist Simon Strickland. The Series was established in 1891 by Henry Clarke Warren (an authority on Buddhism and Pali literature) and Charles Rockwell Lanman (American Orientalist and celebrated Sanskritist). Lanman served as the inaugural editor of the Series from 1891–1934, and saw the …
Language Contact in Nepal: A study on language use and attitudes, by Bhim L Gautam
Finally, a readable and mainstream introduction to the very complex topic of language contact in Nepal. Drawing on his earlier published work and on the harmonised results of a 15-year mixed methods study, Bhim Lal Gautam presents both quantitative and qualitative data on the attitudes and perceptions that speakers of English, Hindi, Nepali, Sherpa, Dotyali, Jumli and Tharu display about their mother tongues. In broad strokes, language contact is…
Global Pandemic, Translocal Medicine: The Covid-19 Diaries of a Tibetan Physician in New York City
This article analyzes the audio diaries of a Tibetan physician, originally from Amdo (Qinghai Province, China), now living in New York City. Dr. Kunchog Tseten describes his experiences during the first wave of the COVID -19 pandemic, in spring and summer 2020, when Queens, New York—the location where he lives and works—was the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The collaborative research project …
After the Return
On 19 January 2012, the workshop After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge was held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. With support from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian's Understanding the American Experience and Valuing World Cultures Consortia, this workshop brought together twenty-eight international participants for a debate around …
Born Archival: The Ebb and Flow of Digital Documents from the Field
Facilitated by an infusion of funding from philanthropic sources, descriptive linguists have been galvanized to document the world's languages before they disappear without record. Linguists have responded to the "crisis of documentation" (Dobrin, L. M. & Berson, J. (2011), "Speakers and Language Documentation", in The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, P. K. Austin & J. Sallabank (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 187–211…
Heritage languages and language as heritage: The language of heritage in Canada and beyond
This article draws on recent discourses surrounding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and its relationship to language preservation, practice, and revitalisation to propose that language be considered a form and practice of heritage in and of itself, not merely a vehicle for the conveyance of ICH. As such, language can serve as a bridge between the often-parallel tracks of tangible and intangible heritage, helping arrive at an understanding of h…
Climing Up, Thinking With, Feeling Through: Ritual, Spirituality and Ecoscience in Northwestern Nepal
This paper examines local knowledge, perceptions, and responses to changing climes in the Trans-Himalayan region of Dolpa in Nepal. Rooted within the environmental humanities and shaped by emerging understandings of faith-based ecospirituality, our research partnership focuses on the experiences of the indigenous Tarali Magar people of Gumbatara and neighbouring Shaharatara in the Tichurong valley. Through place-based engagements and drawing on v…
Literacy
Literacy is a linguistic innovation characterised by the encoding and decoding of language into a system of visual signs whose relevance to daily life in most societies cannot be overstated. Understood to be both a technology and a social practice, literacy has been the subject of anthropological inquiry since the late nineteenth century, with protracted debates about its effects on human consciousness and social life. This entry tracks the devel…
Poetics through Body and Soul: A Plurimodal Approach
In this presentation, I will show that various multimodal resources—such as utterance, prosody, rhythm, schematic images, and bodily reactions—may integratively contribute to the holistic achievement of poeticity. By incorporating the ideas from “ethnopoetics” (Hymes 1981, 1996) and “gesture studies” (McNeill 1992, 2005), I will present a plurimodal analysis of naturally occurring interactions by highlighting the interplay among the verbal, nonve…
What Next for Digital Himalaya? Reflections on Community, Continuity, and Collaboration
What next for Digital Himalaya? Reflections on community, continuity, and collaboration
Anthropological and Other Ancestors: Notes on Setting up a Visual Archive of the Discipline
The Thangmi verbal agreement system and the Kiranti connection
Thangmi is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in central-eastern Nepal and north-eastern India. The majority of Thangmi speakers live in Nepal and still inhabit their traditional homeland of Dolakhá district. There are ethnic Thangmi in many of the other districts of the kingdom, especially in the neighbouring districts of Sindhupálcok, Sindhulī and Rámecháp. The Thangmi population in India is largely concentrated in Darjeeling and is the product of…
Professor Christoph Von Fürer-Haimendorf 1909-1995
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Professor Christoph Von Fürer-Haimendorf 1909-1995
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Thangmi verbal agreement system and the Kiranti connection
Thangmi is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in central-eastern Nepal and north-eastern India. The majority of Thangmi speakers live in Nepal and still inhabit their traditional homeland of Dolakhá district. There are ethnic Thangmi in many of the other districts of the kingdom, especially in the neighbouring districts of Sindhupálcok, Sindhulī and Rámecháp. The Thangmi population in India is largely concentrated in Darjeeling and is the product of…
Language Endangerment and Linguistic Rights in the Himalayas: A Case Study from Nepal
According to even the most conservative estimates, at least half of the world's 6500 languages are expected to become extinct in the next century. While the documentation of endangered languages has traditionally been the domain of academic linguists and anthropologists, international awareness of this impending linguistic catastrophe is growing, and development organizations are becoming involved in the struggle to preserve spoken forms. The dea…
Anthropological and Other Ancestors: Notes on Setting up a Visual Archive of the Discipline
Secrets of Manang: The Story behind the Phenomenal Rise of Nepal's Famed Business Community
Language Endangerment and Language Maintenance
Language Endangerment and Language Maintenance: By David Bradley and Maya Bradley. eds. London. RoutledgeCurzon (Taylor and Francis Group). 2002
If each comes halfway: Meeting Tamang women in Nepal - By Kathryn S. March
If each comes halfway: Meeting Tamang women in Nepal - By Kathryn S March
Language Endangerment and Language Revitalization - By Tasaku Tsunoda
Tribal development in India: The contemporary debate - Edited by Govinda Chandra Rath
Encompassing a fractal world: The energetic female core in myth and everyday life - a few lessons drawn from the Nepalese Himalaya - By Daryn, Gil
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics: Studies in Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics gathers together nine outstanding and original contributions on the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages of this important and culturally diverse mountainous area. Filling a marked gap in our understanding of the languages of this underdocumented region, the collection offers a snapshot of the state of the field of Himalayan language research and linguistic comparison. Drawing on primary fieldwork in China, I…
Himalayan languages and linguistics: Studies in Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics: Studies in Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax
Born Archival: The Ebb and Flow of Digital Documents from the Field
Facilitated by an infusion of funding from philanthropic sources, descriptive linguists have been galvanized to document the world's languages before they disappear without record. Linguists have responded to the "crisis of documentation" (Dobrin, L. M. & Berson, J. (2011), "Speakers and Language Documentation", in The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, P. K. Austin & J. Sallabank (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 187–211…
Nepal and Bhutan in 2011
Nepal's political transition to a democratic federal republic remains incomplete. A November 2011 agreement on post-conflict integration and rehabilitation offers reason for hope. Continued disagreements over the structure of the federal state and its form of government have delayed the constitution-making process. Corruption, impunity, and weak infrastructure combine to erode Nepali confidence in effective governance. Bhutan's democratic exercis…
Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities
Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. This book explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilized as a consequence o…
After the Return
On 19 January 2012, the workshop After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge was held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. With support from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian's Understanding the American Experience and Valuing World Cultures Consortia, this workshop brought together twenty-eight international participants for a debate around …
Devil in The Digital: Ambivalent Results in an Object-Based Teaching Course
In 2013, I piloted a course in which students used Web-based tools to explore underdocumented collections of Himalayan materials at Yale University. Through class-based research and contextualization, I set students the goal of augmenting existing metadata and designing media-rich, virtual tours of the collections that could be incorporated into the sparse catalogue holdings held within the library system. The process was experimental and had mix…
Searching for sharing: Heritage and multimedia in Africa
Afterword: Sharing Located
He has a Ph.D. (with a study on the grammar of the Looma language) from St. Petersburg State University and a habilitation (with a study on the reconstruction of phonology and noun morphology of the Proto-Mande) from the same university.He is the author of numerous publications on the Bambara, Maninka, Looma, and Dan languages as well as on proto-Mande reconstruction and the corpora of the Manding languages
Orality and Mobility: Documenting Himalayan Voices in New York City
Orality and mobility: Documenting Himalayan voices in New York City
What Next for Digital Himalaya? Reflections on Community, Continuity, and Collaboration
What next for Digital Himalaya? Reflections on community, continuity, and collaboration
White Sun = Seto Surya. Written and directed by Deepak Rauniyar; editor, David Barker: Nepal: Aadi Films, 2016. 1 DVD (89 min.) € 21.00, In Nepali with English subtitles
Colour Terms in Tibeto-Burman Languages
In their handling of colour, Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayan region show multiple lexical similarities to one another as well as apparent influences from more dominant languages such as Hindi, Nepali, Tibetan, and Chinese. As an understudied family, Tibeto-Burman languages also serve as an important site to explore modern colour theory and conceptualisation. Outlier languages in the Tibeto-Burman family that do not appear to follow eithe…
Sociology (25 works) · History (24 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Political science (19 works) · Linguistics (18 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Indigenous (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works)