Citizens of a hydropower nation

Territory and agency at the frontiers of hydropower development in Nepal

Bibliographic Data

ID2048880
AuthorsAustin Lord (0000-0003-0620-7363, Cornell University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume3
Issue1
Pages145-160
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2330-4847 • E-ISSN: 2330-4847
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sea2.12051
OpenAlexW2289236582
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited37

This article interrogates Nepal's ongoing and intensifying attempt to become a "hydropower nation" by focusing ethnographic attention on new kinds of subjectivity, identity, and agency emerging at the frontiers of hydropower development in the Upper Trishuli and Upper Tamakoshi watersheds of central Nepal. Drawing on 13 months of field study and ethnographic observation, this article makes a series of arguments about the coevolutionary relationship between the production of an imagined hydropower future and the diverse positions of Nepali citizens living and working along this expanding hydropower frontier. Thematically, my analysis focuses on (a) the scale and velocity of hydropower development in Nepal, (b) the polyvalent role of the hydropower sector within Nepal's recent history of political volatility and vacuums of local governance, (c) an increasingly complex politics of recognition based on "project-affected" identities, and (d) emerging trends of financialization and mobilization sparked by the proliferation of shareholder-based models of benefit sharing that affect the discourse on risk sharing and stakeholder rights in crucial ways. Building on other critical scholarship on Himalayan hydropower development, this article seeks to disaggregate the technical and discursive abstractions of the Nepalese hydroscape by providing an ethnographic account of the micropolitics and praxis that shape the lived experience of hydropower development in Nepal

Corporate governance · Economic growth · Economics · Hydropower · Management · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Cambodian History and Society · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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