Rebuilding the Foundations: Local governance and democratic citizenship in post-earthquake Nepal
“Earthquakes cause devastation in order to change the world, or at least the kingdom. In our country Nepal, earthquakes rocked the nation in 13th, 15th, and 17th century of Vikram Era…Will this earthquake too bring about the similar changes as the quake of v.s. 1890 (1833 AD) did? For the people, of course, things would come and go… After some time, things could transform into stories…” – Vigoman Shrestha (2009 v.s. [1952 AD]), quoted by Yogesh Raj in History as Mindscapes (2067 v.s. [2010 AD])
My book project investigates the politics of disasters using mixed methods with a subnational, comparative design in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It asks 1.) how and why the reconstruction process varies among communities and 2.) how residents view reconstruction as a problem of governance. It compares reconstruction in three urban centers – Kathmandu, Lalitpur (Patan), and Bhaktapur – after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake drawing upon events from the 1900s to today, including an urban development project, land reform, and the 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquake.
Photo taken February 2020
The project is based on over 19 months of in-country language training, observation, and data collection from 2018 to 2024, including over 140 interviews from in and outside of the Valley, archival work from the Nepal Architecture Archive (NAA) and party pamphlets collected in the 1990s by anthropologist Dr. Greg Grieve, and an urban household-level survey (n = 1800). The project contributes to literatures in comparative politics, the political economy of public goods provision and development, governance, identity, and state-society relations.
The project has been made possible with the J. William Fulbright U.S. Student Program Fellowship as well as the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, the Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. My Nepal-based affiliates include the Institute of Engineering (IoE) in Pulchowk, the Samaanta Foundation, and the Martin Chautari Research Group.
Shana Scogin 