The Material Politics of Citizenship: Struggles over Resources, Authority and Belonging in the New Federal Republic of Nepal

Abstract

Examining the boundaries of state-society-citizen-environment after the federal restructuring in Nepal, we ask how do people claim authority or citizenship rights? We theorise state power through the socio-environmental state framework as a set of socio-natural relations in the making, formed by struggles over authority, recognition and environment. Using qualitative data from Barpak, the epicentre of the 2015 earthquake, we capture the politics of natural resource governance that (re)emerged during earthquake reconstruction and local-level elections, illustrating how control over resources is negotiated, disputed, and inscribed in law (land titles and water sources) and landscapes (water sources, earthquake resettlement area, an open-air museum).

Keywords

Boundary-making; disasters; earthquake reconstruction; federalism; Nepal; political ecology; resource conflicts; socio-environmental state; state formation

Published in

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
2019, Volume: 42, number: 5, pages: 886-902
Publisher: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

SLU Authors

• Nightingale, Andrea

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of Oslo (UiO)

UKÄ Subject classification

Public Administration Studies
Human Geography


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1639111

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/101961