Anne de Sales | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research (original) (raw)
Papers by Anne de Sales
Oral Tradition, 2016
This issue of Oral Tradition presents a collection of anthropological studies on the sources of a... more This issue of Oral Tradition presents a collection of anthropological studies on the sources of authority for ritual and legal speech in the Himalayan region. Its goal is twofold: first, to shed new light on a region whose diversity of oral traditions has so far resisted comparative studies; and second, to reconsider two major theories of language communication that confront linguistics and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu's essays on the symbolic power of language have the advantage of presenting strong views on the subject and provide a stimulating point of departure for a collective work exploring authoritative speech from a comparative perspective. Written between 1975 and 1982, Bourdieu's essays (1982 and 2001) were motivated by the then overwhelming position of linguistics in social sciences and the need he felt to reintroduce social relations in the analysis of linguistic communication. His criticisms also targeted anthropology, which assumed the neutrality of the observer and ignored relations of power. Thirty years on, while these criticisms have lost some of their relevance in other contexts, the social and political rooting of oral traditions in the Himalayas have remain little explored. This collection of articles aims at encouraging such a perspective and at developing comparative studies in the Himalayan region. Indeed, the latter forms a unique context where "archaic" ritual contexts meet modernity. All the essays address contemporary situations that are embedded in inherited social and political relations that now face social transformations. Himalayan communities are characterized by rich oral traditions that remain extremely lively in rural and urban contexts, although the studies of the latter are scarce. The oral compositions remain a fundamental part of religious and even economic activity. These traditions, which are highly diverse and yet belong to the same cultural area, have not yet been reconsidered along common theoretical guidelines. The originality of the present collection of essays lies in its presentation of oral speech belonging to different fields: bardic tradition (Leavitt; Lecomte-Tilouine), shamanic tradition (Gaenszle; de Sales), judicial speech (Berti; Berardi; Jahoda), musical language (Bernède), and ordinary language (Ghimire). All these registers claim a certain authority and even to tell the truth. Indeed these case studies highlight that the issue of truth is central to ritual and legal speech in the Himalaya. The bard, the shaman, and the judge all claim, in one way or another, to speak the truth. The issue of truth is, thus, central, and appears as the common denominator of the main genres of oral tradition explored in this volume.
Autrepart, 2002
... leur origine autochtone ou tribale représentent environ 35% de la population répartie en de n... more ... leur origine autochtone ou tribale représentent environ 35% de la population répartie en de nombreux groupes classés comme tibéto-birmans d'après ... sont voués à des récits édi-fiants concernant Prithvi Narayan Shah, le «père du Népal, l'alpiniste Pasang Lhamu Sherpa et le ...
Etudes Mongoles Et Siberiennes Centrasiatiques Et Tibetaines, Dec 28, 2009
Theoremes Enjeux Des Approches Empiriques Des Religions, Dec 31, 2013
Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, 2010
... The book develops 19 stories based on different characters, each representative of his or her... more ... The book develops 19 stories based on different characters, each representative of his or her time. The first chapter describes a small band of blood-related kin around the mother, Nisha, living by Page 41. 34 ANNE DE SALES hunting on the upper banks of the Volga. ...
The Politics of Belonging in the Himalayas: Local Attachments and Boundary Dynamics, 2011
Expanding the Economic Concept of Exchange, 2001
This article concerns the first region that the Maoists declared to be their base area, in the we... more This article concerns the first region that the Maoists declared to be their base area, in the western part of Nepal. It examines how the 10 years of insurrection are reconstructed through two narratives by non-aligned villagers from the same community. These accounts concern two different phases of the conflict. In the first account, the violent irruption of the security forces into the village turned a spotlight on the structural features and historical conditions which made the community vulnerable to the outside intervention, whether by the rebels or by the state. The second narrative illustrates the obverse side of the same community: its capacity to stand up to oppression on the occasion of a Maoist ban on a sacrifice to the local god. The juxtaposition of the two narratives reveals a process of political maturation characterised by a critical analysis of the past and a nascent confidence in the expression of needs and rights.
This chapter explores the tensions between ethnic and class-based emancipation through an in-dept... more This chapter explores the tensions between ethnic and class-based emancipation through an in-depth analysis of the Nepali case. The first section shows that cultural diversity was at first legally recognised but organised according to caste hierarchy. This was, in the course of the 20 th century, contradicted by the individual equality of all citizens before the law. However, in both cases, cultural subordination was also economic and political. The second section shows, through observations made of one indigenous community, the Kham-Magars, how the Maoist movement acted in violation of their class analysis: both intentionally (through its tactic of alliance with ethnic fronts) and incidentally (following the failure of its cultural revolution) it politicised Kham-Magar ethnic identity. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to distinguish between the 'capacity for culture', involving healthy debates within a community, and conservative identity politics. Nepal's recent history has been marked by a movement for political emancipation, which took two intertwined, but often conflicting directions. There was first a Maoist struggle, based on a class analysis that succeeded in overthrowing an autocratic Hindu monarchy after 10 years of armed insurgency (1996-2006) and established a democratic republic. Second, there were claims for political and cultural recognition from a large component of the population 1 in quest of a federal constitution based on ethnic distinctions. These conflicting tendencies in Nepal's recent emancipatory struggle have to be set in the historical context from which they developed. The ideal of modernity that came to dominate the world in the post-colonial 20th century was conceived, mutatis mutandis, as emancipation from local affiliations and particularisms inherited from an irrelevant past. The future was imagined as 'breaking the chains' of the past and local attachments (kin, regional) were
Oral Tradition, 2016
This issue of Oral Tradition presents a collection of anthropological studies on the sources of a... more This issue of Oral Tradition presents a collection of anthropological studies on the sources of authority for ritual and legal speech in the Himalayan region. Its goal is twofold: first, to shed new light on a region whose diversity of oral traditions has so far resisted comparative studies; and second, to reconsider two major theories of language communication that confront linguistics and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu's essays on the symbolic power of language have the advantage of presenting strong views on the subject and provide a stimulating point of departure for a collective work exploring authoritative speech from a comparative perspective. Written between 1975 and 1982, Bourdieu's essays (1982 and 2001) were motivated by the then overwhelming position of linguistics in social sciences and the need he felt to reintroduce social relations in the analysis of linguistic communication. His criticisms also targeted anthropology, which assumed the neutrality of the observer and ignored relations of power. Thirty years on, while these criticisms have lost some of their relevance in other contexts, the social and political rooting of oral traditions in the Himalayas have remain little explored. This collection of articles aims at encouraging such a perspective and at developing comparative studies in the Himalayan region. Indeed, the latter forms a unique context where "archaic" ritual contexts meet modernity. All the essays address contemporary situations that are embedded in inherited social and political relations that now face social transformations. Himalayan communities are characterized by rich oral traditions that remain extremely lively in rural and urban contexts, although the studies of the latter are scarce. The oral compositions remain a fundamental part of religious and even economic activity. These traditions, which are highly diverse and yet belong to the same cultural area, have not yet been reconsidered along common theoretical guidelines. The originality of the present collection of essays lies in its presentation of oral speech belonging to different fields: bardic tradition (Leavitt; Lecomte-Tilouine), shamanic tradition (Gaenszle; de Sales), judicial speech (Berti; Berardi; Jahoda), musical language (Bernède), and ordinary language (Ghimire). All these registers claim a certain authority and even to tell the truth. Indeed these case studies highlight that the issue of truth is central to ritual and legal speech in the Himalaya. The bard, the shaman, and the judge all claim, in one way or another, to speak the truth. The issue of truth is, thus, central, and appears as the common denominator of the main genres of oral tradition explored in this volume.
Autrepart, 2002
... leur origine autochtone ou tribale représentent environ 35% de la population répartie en de n... more ... leur origine autochtone ou tribale représentent environ 35% de la population répartie en de nombreux groupes classés comme tibéto-birmans d'après ... sont voués à des récits édi-fiants concernant Prithvi Narayan Shah, le «père du Népal, l'alpiniste Pasang Lhamu Sherpa et le ...
Etudes Mongoles Et Siberiennes Centrasiatiques Et Tibetaines, Dec 28, 2009
Theoremes Enjeux Des Approches Empiriques Des Religions, Dec 31, 2013
Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, 2010
... The book develops 19 stories based on different characters, each representative of his or her... more ... The book develops 19 stories based on different characters, each representative of his or her time. The first chapter describes a small band of blood-related kin around the mother, Nisha, living by Page 41. 34 ANNE DE SALES hunting on the upper banks of the Volga. ...
The Politics of Belonging in the Himalayas: Local Attachments and Boundary Dynamics, 2011
Expanding the Economic Concept of Exchange, 2001
This article concerns the first region that the Maoists declared to be their base area, in the we... more This article concerns the first region that the Maoists declared to be their base area, in the western part of Nepal. It examines how the 10 years of insurrection are reconstructed through two narratives by non-aligned villagers from the same community. These accounts concern two different phases of the conflict. In the first account, the violent irruption of the security forces into the village turned a spotlight on the structural features and historical conditions which made the community vulnerable to the outside intervention, whether by the rebels or by the state. The second narrative illustrates the obverse side of the same community: its capacity to stand up to oppression on the occasion of a Maoist ban on a sacrifice to the local god. The juxtaposition of the two narratives reveals a process of political maturation characterised by a critical analysis of the past and a nascent confidence in the expression of needs and rights.
This chapter explores the tensions between ethnic and class-based emancipation through an in-dept... more This chapter explores the tensions between ethnic and class-based emancipation through an in-depth analysis of the Nepali case. The first section shows that cultural diversity was at first legally recognised but organised according to caste hierarchy. This was, in the course of the 20 th century, contradicted by the individual equality of all citizens before the law. However, in both cases, cultural subordination was also economic and political. The second section shows, through observations made of one indigenous community, the Kham-Magars, how the Maoist movement acted in violation of their class analysis: both intentionally (through its tactic of alliance with ethnic fronts) and incidentally (following the failure of its cultural revolution) it politicised Kham-Magar ethnic identity. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to distinguish between the 'capacity for culture', involving healthy debates within a community, and conservative identity politics. Nepal's recent history has been marked by a movement for political emancipation, which took two intertwined, but often conflicting directions. There was first a Maoist struggle, based on a class analysis that succeeded in overthrowing an autocratic Hindu monarchy after 10 years of armed insurgency (1996-2006) and established a democratic republic. Second, there were claims for political and cultural recognition from a large component of the population 1 in quest of a federal constitution based on ethnic distinctions. These conflicting tendencies in Nepal's recent emancipatory struggle have to be set in the historical context from which they developed. The ideal of modernity that came to dominate the world in the post-colonial 20th century was conceived, mutatis mutandis, as emancipation from local affiliations and particularisms inherited from an irrelevant past. The future was imagined as 'breaking the chains' of the past and local attachments (kin, regional) were