T. Harris

Silk Roads and Wool Routes: Contemporary Geographies of Trade Between Lhasa and Kalimpong

It is a clear Sunday afternoon in Kalimpong, a town of about 43,000 inhabitants in the mountainous northernmost tip of the state of West Bengal. The rhododendrons are glaringly bright against the green foliage, and the air is especially pleasant after months of heavy monsoon rain and the resulting landslides that would sporadically halt transport for days on end. I walk quickly down the hill, past the Mela ground and the motor stand in the center of town, on my way to meet a man named Tsering, someone whom a friend insists I should speak with if I would like to know more about the recent history of the Lhasa–Kalimpong trade route

From Heavy Beads to Safety Pins: Adornment and Religiosity in Hindu Women’s Pote Practices

Abstract This article examines the object of the beaded necklace worn by married women in Nepal – called pote – and the ambiguities and layers of meaning surrounding pote in the lived worlds of the women who wear them. The ways women understand and use pote offer a view of religious belief as constituted and enacted through lived practices, surrounding and taking place through material objects. To illustrate this, this essay focuses on the ways that knowledge about the pote is transmitted and the spatial practices of pote wearing. A new generation of upper caste Hindu women of the Kathmandu valley are negotiating socio-cultural norms in an ever-shifting socio-cultural landscape characteristic of modernity, yet unique to Nepal. Pote practices offer a window into these women’s shifting worlds revealing creativity, agency, and re-invention of new modes of practice informed by traditional codes of women’s religious behavior.