Title: Revisiting Development Discourse in Nepal:Turbulent Textile and Garment Industry as a Case Study
Speaker: Mallika Shakya (Assistant Professor South Asian University, New Delhi)

Date: October 6 (Mon.), 16.00-18.00, 2014
Place: AA447, 4th Floor, Research Building No. 2, Yoshida Main Campus,
Kyoto University (http://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/access/yoshida/main.html Building no. 34
on the map)

SYNOPSIS:
The end of the cold war was the beginning of a new era in
South Asia. New political regimes dramatically displaced the old,
while the new rhetoric of economic globalism and development
overshadowed the earlier notions of national capitalism. I make sense
of this paradigm shift through the everyday production and trade of
textile and garments between Nepal and the United States. This
industry in Nepal enjoyed a remarkable rise at the tail end of the
cold war (1970s-1990s) but faced an abrupt end after 2001, bringing
with it unprecedented consequences for the businessmen and workers
involved. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork on the garment shop
floors and trade union offices in Kathmandu, as well as my engagement
with policymakers in Washington DC who regulated this industry
globally, I suggest that the global politics of trade is turning Nepal
into a new economic frontier of the post-cold-war era.

Contact:
Tatsuro Fujikura, Department of South Asia and Indian Ocean
Studies, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS),
Kyoto University

http://www.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/global/minami.html

This seminar is co-organized by South Asia and Indian Ocean Study
Group, INDAS International Seminar, and Asia Leadership Fellow Program