Nawa Katsuo
名和克郎

Years of Stay at HYI

Aug 2013 to Jun 2014

University Affiliation

Katsuo Nawa is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. He received his B.A. (1990), M.A. (1992), and Ph.D. (1999) from the University of Tokyo. Based on his anthropological fieldwork in Far Western Nepal, he has written extensively on inter-ethnic and inter-caste relations, sociocultural transformation and ritual process, and language use and its objectification. His current research interests include ethnohistory of a Himalayan village, politics and poetics of ethnic movements in Nepal, and the time-space construction in Byans and its transformation. During his stay at Harvard-Yenching Institute, he will work on “Rituals, Social Categories, Languages, and History in Byans, Far Western Nepal and Adjacent Regions: An Anthropological Study.”

His major publication in Japanese is Nepal, Byans oyobi Shuhen Chiiki niokeru Girei to Shakai Hanchu ni kansuru Minzokushiteki Kenkyu: Mouhitotu no ‘Kindai’ no Fuchi (An Ethnographic Study on Rituals and Social Categories of Byans, Nepal and Adjacent Regions: Another Constellation of ‘Modernity’) (Sangensha, 2002) which won the 30th Shibusawa prizes in 2004. In addition he co-edited (with Hiroshi Ishii and David N. Gellner) two volumes of books, Nepalis Inside and Outside Nepal: Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia Vol. 1, and Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal: Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia Vol. 2 (Manohar, 2007).  He is also a co-editor of Asian Anthropology. 

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