Uma Pradhan
Uma Pradhan's current research examines the contested process of everyday state-making through a study on school reconstruction projects in post-earthquake Nepal (https://www.southasia.ox.ac.uk/people/uma-pradhan)
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Book by Uma Pradhan
This book is explores the interconnected issue of language, education and nationalism, presented through an ethnography of mother tongue education in Nepal. The recent sociopolitical changes in Nepal has brought assimilationist notions of Nepali nationalism under tight scrutiny and drawn attention to more plural, inclusive and diverse notions of Nepaliness. However, differences notwithstanding, both assimilationist and pluralist visions continue to remain normative in its approach and often posit ethnic and national identity in opposition to each other. Drawing on the everyday practices in two schools, Jagat Sundar Bwonekuthi and Jana Kalyan Higher Secondary School, this book illustrates that social actors in minority language education do not necessarily select between minority identity and national identity, but instead shift the terms of engagement by discursively positioning ‘ethnic identity’ as ‘national identity’.
This book is based on the premise that language dynamics in public places reveal a lot about the process of negotiation of symbolic power that is underway in any sociopolitical context. Here, the book highlights two distinct but interrelated dynamics. On the one hand, everyday language practices in the schools display inward-looking characteristics by ensuring mother-tongue competency and conscious construction of unified ethnolinguistic identity. On the other hand, there are outward-looking dynamics of transcending ethnic boundaries and actively engaging with the broader national education system. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups and claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism hitherto associated with Nepali. Contrary to the ideas of difference espoused in ethnic activism and the assimilationist ideas of homogeneity articulated in nationalist discourse, students made simultaneous claims to more than one social identity which were considered neither incompatible nor binary opposites. This emerging narrative of simultaneities in minority language education may help us to appreciate the issues of national and minority identity in a more open-ended way.
Papers by Uma Pradhan
With a focus on the actual costs of free education and local-level modes of educational financing of government schooling in Nepal, this article contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on increasing commercialization of the public education system, not just in Nepal, but across the world in the context of widespread neoliberal forces. It particularly emphasises the ways in which private-public dynamics in education coexist, compete, and rely on each other. These complex interactions blur the boundaries between public and private domain in the education system of Nepal and reveal an interconnection between economic and symbolic values attached to different educational practices. Such processes of constructing legitimacy compel us to acknowledge the new manifestations in commercialization of education that insist on market-style models and that sidestep the norms that characterize education as public good.
https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2019.1642615
Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2019.1645084
https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-468
The scholarly works on ethnicity and nationalism have been highly dominated by binary frameworks. In addition, the normative preference for civic consciousness and the concerns of national disintegration often separate the notions of ethnicity and nationalism. This article suggests that the notions of ethnicity and nationalism cannot be understood exclusively as a choice between maintaining the integrity of the nation and completely rejecting it. Drawing on fieldwork in mother tongue schools in Nepal, the article draws attention to the ways in which school actors discursively positioned ethnic identity as imperative to national identity, the one that bolsters the notion of Nepali nationhood. By paying close attention to the everyday context within which discourses of nationalism are situated, this article argues for an analytical necessity to approach ethnicity and nationalism in relation to each other to appreciate the process of symbolic negotiations in public spaces.
Quality education is increasingly considered essential for human development. However, the mainstream approach to quality as a neutral technology often ignores deeply embedded issues of power relations. This article interrogates the taken-for-granted idea of ‘quality education’ by exploring the ways in which students navigate the assumption of quality education in two mother-tongue schools in Nepal. Drawing on the concept of language ideology, this article shows that the perceived social prestige associated with a language choice is closely intertwined with the discourse of quality education in Nepal. In this context, the students secure ‘imageries of competence’ by repeatedly drawing attention to more acceptable indicators of ‘quality’ such as high examination scores, English proficiency and continuation of higher studies. This article foregrounds the power relations embedded in the perception of quality education and intends to be of wider analytical relevance to other socially heterogeneous contexts beyond Nepal.
Community-based school governance has been promoted as a popular policy for decentralization of education around the world. Within this policy, schools are expected to create institutional spaces such as School Management Committees with an assumption of reciprocal relation between school and community. This article questions the simplistic assumption on community-school relationship through an ethnographic study in Nepal. While these relationships may conflict with the kind of reciprocity assumed in school governance policies, we argue that this disjunctured reciprocity, firstly, reflects the gap between policy blueprints and action, and, secondly, reveals the competing logics of community-school relations which remain unacknowledged.
Mother-tongue education has remained a controversial issue in Nepal. Scholars, activists and policy-makers have, on the one hand, favored mother-tongue education from the standpoint of social justice. Against these views, others have identified this as predominantly groupist in its orientation and not helpful in an imagination of a unified national community. Taking this contention as a point of inquiry, this paper aims to explore the contested space of mother-tongue education to understand the ways in which people position themselves within the polarizing debates of ethnicity-based claims on education in Nepal. Drawing from the ethnographic fieldwork in mother-tongue education school, in this paper, I illustrate that the students made meaning in their everyday world by maintaining the multilingual repertoire that included their mother tongue, Nepali and some English; multilingualism was used as a strategy for mother-tongue education. I propose a notion of simultaneity to explain this attempt to seek membership into multiple groups and display of apparently contradictory dynamics. The practices in these schools, on the one hand, display inward-looking characteristics through the everyday use of mother tongue, the construction of unified ethnic identity and cultural practices. On the other hand, there were outward-looking dynamics of making claims in the universal spaces of national education and public places. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups, claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism, hitherto associated with Nepali. This paper illustrates that contrary to the essentialist categories espoused in both nationalist discourse and ethnic activism, students in these school display affiliation to multiple languages and identities that were seen as neither incompatible nor binary opposites.
articulating the democratic aspirations of marginalised castes, creeds, tribal peoples and other ethnic groups, governments must work in collaboration with actors in civil society. As monolithically constructed communities are splintered along ‘local’ constituents and development agencies relate rights-based programming with disaggregated data on caste, class and gender, the possibilities for multiculturalism become manifold. Democratic pluralism
is key to development. This paper is based on fieldwork in two contiguous regions of South Asia; the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, and the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On the
one hand, this region has been the hotbed of linguo-religious identity construction and contestation since at least the 1870s, and especially after the 1920s. On the other hand, it has recently been witness to the emergence of strong political movements among hitherto ‘untouchable’ Dalits and landless classes, and the active interest of development agencies.
Three broad themes are explored through this paper; the impact of development and markets on Dalit communities, cultures of subjugation and protest among them, and the impact of community-based groups on how they are able to negotiate and contest their disadvantages. The emergence of community-based organisations, especially those formed during the course of the struggle for labour rights, are seen as contributing to democratic pluralism. At the same time, the paper advises caution by emphasising that the formation of community-based organisations is no substitute for political advocacy or technical solutions; rather, they must be grounded in local traditions of protest to be effective.
This book is explores the interconnected issue of language, education and nationalism, presented through an ethnography of mother tongue education in Nepal. The recent sociopolitical changes in Nepal has brought assimilationist notions of Nepali nationalism under tight scrutiny and drawn attention to more plural, inclusive and diverse notions of Nepaliness. However, differences notwithstanding, both assimilationist and pluralist visions continue to remain normative in its approach and often posit ethnic and national identity in opposition to each other. Drawing on the everyday practices in two schools, Jagat Sundar Bwonekuthi and Jana Kalyan Higher Secondary School, this book illustrates that social actors in minority language education do not necessarily select between minority identity and national identity, but instead shift the terms of engagement by discursively positioning ‘ethnic identity’ as ‘national identity’.
This book is based on the premise that language dynamics in public places reveal a lot about the process of negotiation of symbolic power that is underway in any sociopolitical context. Here, the book highlights two distinct but interrelated dynamics. On the one hand, everyday language practices in the schools display inward-looking characteristics by ensuring mother-tongue competency and conscious construction of unified ethnolinguistic identity. On the other hand, there are outward-looking dynamics of transcending ethnic boundaries and actively engaging with the broader national education system. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups and claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism hitherto associated with Nepali. Contrary to the ideas of difference espoused in ethnic activism and the assimilationist ideas of homogeneity articulated in nationalist discourse, students made simultaneous claims to more than one social identity which were considered neither incompatible nor binary opposites. This emerging narrative of simultaneities in minority language education may help us to appreciate the issues of national and minority identity in a more open-ended way.
With a focus on the actual costs of free education and local-level modes of educational financing of government schooling in Nepal, this article contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on increasing commercialization of the public education system, not just in Nepal, but across the world in the context of widespread neoliberal forces. It particularly emphasises the ways in which private-public dynamics in education coexist, compete, and rely on each other. These complex interactions blur the boundaries between public and private domain in the education system of Nepal and reveal an interconnection between economic and symbolic values attached to different educational practices. Such processes of constructing legitimacy compel us to acknowledge the new manifestations in commercialization of education that insist on market-style models and that sidestep the norms that characterize education as public good.
https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2019.1642615
Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2019.1645084
https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-468
The scholarly works on ethnicity and nationalism have been highly dominated by binary frameworks. In addition, the normative preference for civic consciousness and the concerns of national disintegration often separate the notions of ethnicity and nationalism. This article suggests that the notions of ethnicity and nationalism cannot be understood exclusively as a choice between maintaining the integrity of the nation and completely rejecting it. Drawing on fieldwork in mother tongue schools in Nepal, the article draws attention to the ways in which school actors discursively positioned ethnic identity as imperative to national identity, the one that bolsters the notion of Nepali nationhood. By paying close attention to the everyday context within which discourses of nationalism are situated, this article argues for an analytical necessity to approach ethnicity and nationalism in relation to each other to appreciate the process of symbolic negotiations in public spaces.
Quality education is increasingly considered essential for human development. However, the mainstream approach to quality as a neutral technology often ignores deeply embedded issues of power relations. This article interrogates the taken-for-granted idea of ‘quality education’ by exploring the ways in which students navigate the assumption of quality education in two mother-tongue schools in Nepal. Drawing on the concept of language ideology, this article shows that the perceived social prestige associated with a language choice is closely intertwined with the discourse of quality education in Nepal. In this context, the students secure ‘imageries of competence’ by repeatedly drawing attention to more acceptable indicators of ‘quality’ such as high examination scores, English proficiency and continuation of higher studies. This article foregrounds the power relations embedded in the perception of quality education and intends to be of wider analytical relevance to other socially heterogeneous contexts beyond Nepal.
Community-based school governance has been promoted as a popular policy for decentralization of education around the world. Within this policy, schools are expected to create institutional spaces such as School Management Committees with an assumption of reciprocal relation between school and community. This article questions the simplistic assumption on community-school relationship through an ethnographic study in Nepal. While these relationships may conflict with the kind of reciprocity assumed in school governance policies, we argue that this disjunctured reciprocity, firstly, reflects the gap between policy blueprints and action, and, secondly, reveals the competing logics of community-school relations which remain unacknowledged.
Mother-tongue education has remained a controversial issue in Nepal. Scholars, activists and policy-makers have, on the one hand, favored mother-tongue education from the standpoint of social justice. Against these views, others have identified this as predominantly groupist in its orientation and not helpful in an imagination of a unified national community. Taking this contention as a point of inquiry, this paper aims to explore the contested space of mother-tongue education to understand the ways in which people position themselves within the polarizing debates of ethnicity-based claims on education in Nepal. Drawing from the ethnographic fieldwork in mother-tongue education school, in this paper, I illustrate that the students made meaning in their everyday world by maintaining the multilingual repertoire that included their mother tongue, Nepali and some English; multilingualism was used as a strategy for mother-tongue education. I propose a notion of simultaneity to explain this attempt to seek membership into multiple groups and display of apparently contradictory dynamics. The practices in these schools, on the one hand, display inward-looking characteristics through the everyday use of mother tongue, the construction of unified ethnic identity and cultural practices. On the other hand, there were outward-looking dynamics of making claims in the universal spaces of national education and public places. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups, claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism, hitherto associated with Nepali. This paper illustrates that contrary to the essentialist categories espoused in both nationalist discourse and ethnic activism, students in these school display affiliation to multiple languages and identities that were seen as neither incompatible nor binary opposites.
articulating the democratic aspirations of marginalised castes, creeds, tribal peoples and other ethnic groups, governments must work in collaboration with actors in civil society. As monolithically constructed communities are splintered along ‘local’ constituents and development agencies relate rights-based programming with disaggregated data on caste, class and gender, the possibilities for multiculturalism become manifold. Democratic pluralism
is key to development. This paper is based on fieldwork in two contiguous regions of South Asia; the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, and the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On the
one hand, this region has been the hotbed of linguo-religious identity construction and contestation since at least the 1870s, and especially after the 1920s. On the other hand, it has recently been witness to the emergence of strong political movements among hitherto ‘untouchable’ Dalits and landless classes, and the active interest of development agencies.
Three broad themes are explored through this paper; the impact of development and markets on Dalit communities, cultures of subjugation and protest among them, and the impact of community-based groups on how they are able to negotiate and contest their disadvantages. The emergence of community-based organisations, especially those formed during the course of the struggle for labour rights, are seen as contributing to democratic pluralism. At the same time, the paper advises caution by emphasising that the formation of community-based organisations is no substitute for political advocacy or technical solutions; rather, they must be grounded in local traditions of protest to be effective.
Please click here for S1Episode2 of Nepal Conversations: https://youtu.be/F-lnAxBSz-o
Through April and May, Nepal Conversations will present a series of conversations on the topic of disasters, and what it means for Nepali society. In our first episode, we talk to Dr Liana Chase (Assistant Professor, Durham University) on the issue of mental health during disasters. Click here to listen to our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s49FLsFsFdQ
'Lockdown Diaries' is a short documentary on everyday lives of students in government schools in Nepal. Here, we've tried to capture what going to school means for students in Nepal amidst the uncertainties posed by 2015 earthquake and COVID-19 pandemic.
This project is supported by the University of Oxford’s Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund. This documentary is part of a research project on education and social change in Nepal, funded by Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.
Concept and Production: Uma Pradhan
Camera: Gaurab Bhandari and Rama Dahal
Post Production: Gaurab Bhandari
Direction and Translation: Garima Bhandari