Reigning the River – Urban Ecologies and Political Transformation in Kathmandu: New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century

“Cutting-edge social science has not kept pace with the shift of most of the human population to urban areas. Anne Rademacher helps to remedy this deficiency by asking, as one of her informants did of her, ‘What is urban ecology?’ In answer, she employs the Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers in Kathmandu as a ‘lens’ to examine how urban nature and culture are mutually produced, reinforced, and changed, deftly interweaving recent political and environmental transformations in Nepal. The result is a pioneering study of the moral and affective dimensions of a twenty-first century urban environment. Rademacher’s study is a model for a new generation of urban studies, which will link cities to their histories and hinterlands, their politics and cultures, as well as their bio-physical settings.” Michael R. Dove, Yale University“This lucidly written and rigorously argued book is likely to become a major contribution to the anthropology of the Himalayan environment, and to the small but growing literature on urban modernity in Nepal. The sorry state of the Bagmati is, in the eyes of environmental activists, a metaphor for the state of Nepal itself, and in elucidating their critique and their vision for a more ordered and coherent future, Anne Rademacher has also made a deeply original contribution to political anthropology. This book deserves to be widely read by both students of Himalayan society, culture and politics, and by those who work in the areas of Nepal’s environment, development and governance. The clarity of the writing makes it especially suitable as an undergraduate text in a range of courses on environment and development, political anthropology, urban anthropology and South Asian studies.” Arjun Guneratne, Macalester College