Thinking with Signs: Caste, Ethnicity and the Dual Body in Contemporary Eastern Nepal*

Green, E. Mara

doi:10.1080/00856401.2022.1997932

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…One possible, slight difference in the sign between the living and the material may lie in the attribute of their temporality. In conversation, ways of referring to ethnicity change as discourse changes (Green, 2022), whereas the visuality of materiality often serves as an ethnicity memorandum and prediction in the present tense and caters to various external gazes through obscure metaphors.…”

Section: Ethnic Art Toward Social-political Changementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Guru Rinpoche is Śivajī’: Ethnicity and ethnic boundary drift in Nepal’s ethnic art

2023

Ethnicities

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This paper argues that ethnic paintings connotate situational ethnicity, adjusted by social change and ethnic boundaries. Based on anthropological fieldwork focusing on painter and mercantile communities, social-political connotations of ethnic art are discussed by applying an analysis of social semiotics in three discourses, employing the case of post-1990 Nepal. In particular: 1) Modern visual expressions of ethnicity are adopted into anti-hierarchical representations, as people engage in ethnic politics and cultural activities. 2) The two genres of ethnic painting, paubhā, and thangka, which were developed by traditional creators and informed by ethnicity, have experienced and developed a cross-boundary mode of operating in industries in response to social change. 3) In the market and mass media, the narrative of value construction regarding the tradition of ethnic art reveals a sign arena that identifies a drift toward the nation, the state, and civilization, prepensely attempting to mobilize semiotic resources through the lens of politics, the market, and global values.

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Section: Ethnic Art Toward Social-political Changementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Guru Rinpoche is Śivajī’: Ethnicity and ethnic boundary drift in Nepal’s ethnic art

2023

Ethnicities

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“…5 My use of "deaf society," translated from NSL, reflects my commitment to attending to the historical and cultural specificities of Nepal, and is part of a broader "proliferation of analytics" beyond founding concepts in Deaf Studies such as "deaf culture" (Friedner and Kusters 2020, 35). 6 I use the terms natural sign (for this mode of signing throughout Nepal) as well as local sign and local natural sign (for this mode of signing in Maunabudhuk and Bodhe) (Green 2014b(Green , 2017(Green , 2022. Hoffmann-Dilloway has also written about natural sign in Nepal under the terms homesign (2011b, 2016) and more recently natural sign (2021), while Graif (2018) uses the terms natural and home sign, as well as (citing Green 2014b) local sign.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The eye and the other: Language and ethics in deaf Nepal

Green

2022

American Anthropologist

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This article examines interactions between deaf and hearing people in Nepal that are conducted in natural sign, a mode of signed communication involving relatively small repertoires of conventional signs complemented by iconic and indexical strategies. Natural sign is an exemplary case for unpacking the claim that ethics is not only intrinsic to linguistic interaction but also grounds its very possibility. While this is ultimately true for all language use, natural sign heightens this quality and its consequences, in terms of both interaction (whether people understand) and analysis (how scholars understand whether people understand). Bringing together Nepali Sign Language users’ insights with academic theories of interaction, pragmatics, and semiotics, this article demonstrates the high stakes for deaf natural signers of being rendered intelligible or unintelligible by the “ordinary” ethical actions of their interlocutors.

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Thinking with Signs: Caste, Ethnicity and the Dual Body in Contemporary Eastern Nepal*

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

‘Guru Rinpoche is Śivajī’: Ethnicity and ethnic boundary drift in Nepal’s ethnic art

‘Guru Rinpoche is Śivajī’: Ethnicity and ethnic boundary drift in Nepal’s ethnic art

The eye and the other: Language and ethics in deaf Nepal

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