How to do things with “rituals” in Byans, Far Western Nepal

Co-sponsored with the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University

 

The main inhabitants of Byans, a Himalayan valley in Far Western Nepal, have performed various standardized sequences of actions which anthropologists have called rituals. In this talk, Prof. Nawa will describe these “rituals” ethnographically without presupposing that they are rituals. Many of these “rituals” are conceptualized as verbs, and almost always “done” by carrying out one, two, of three named small actions. Prof. Nawa will discuss what they “physically” do in these “rituals,” what they call these “rituals” and particular actions, how they explain them, and what these “rituals” as a whole and particular actions “bring about,” referring to but not relying on such terms as “symbol,” “structure,” “function,” “interpretation,” “ideology,” “resistance,” “-ization,” “aesthetics,” and “ritual” itself.