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  1. What went right : sustainability versus dependence in Nepal's hydropower development

    Liechty, Mark, 1960-
    Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022.

    "What Went Right explores why Nepal's hydropower sector is one of the country's few development success stories. Unlike almost every other "developing" country, in Nepal local firms design and build complex hydropower facilities using Nepali engineers, builders, components, and labor. Nepal has largely avoided the trap whereby most poor countries are forced to accept energy infrastructure projects that are foreign designed, funded, and built-typically resulting in debt, dependency, and unsustainability. This book traces the half-century history of the Butwal Power Company and the anti-establishment development logic of its founder, Odd Hoftun. A pioneering Norwegian engineer, development worker, and missionary, Hoftun insisted that, if Nepal was to create a modern national economy, Nepalis must develop technical skills needed to break the cycle of poverty, a view that led Hoftun to promote Nepali-driven hydropower development as the key to Nepal's industrial future. Counter to prevailing development logics (then and now), Hoftun insisted that all aspects of hydropower development (design, construction, manufacturing, maintenance) be done in Nepal, by Nepalis. The book traces the struggle between two competing development paradigms: one that emphasizes gradual national human capacity building (at the expense of speed and efficiency) and another that emphasizes rapid, large-scale infrastructure building (at the risk of unsustainability and dependency). At stake is whether what passes for "development" primarily benefits the countries in which it occurs, or the banks, corporations, and other investors that finance capital-intensive projects. What Went Right brings a vision for sustainable development into vigorous conversation with other development strategies that have proven, repeatedly, to be less productive"--This book explores why Nepal's hydropower sector is one of its few development success stories. Unlike most other 'developing' countries, in Nepal local firms design and build hydropower facilities using Nepali engineers, builders and labor. Nepal has largely avoided the trap whereby most poor countries are forced to accept energy infrastructure projects that are foreign designed, funded and built - typically resulting in debt, dependency and unsustainability. It traces the struggle between two competing development paradigms: one that emphasizes gradual national human capacity building - at the expense of speed and efficiency - and another that emphasizes rapid, large-scale infrastructure building - at the risk of unsustainability and dependency. At stake is whether what passes for 'development' benefits the countries in which it occurs, or the banks and investors that finance capital-intensive projects. What Went Right brings a vision for sustainable development into vigorous conversation with development strategies that have proven to be less productive.

    Online Cambridge University Press

  2. Suitably modern : making middle-class culture in a new consumer society

    Liechty, Mark, 1960-
    Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2003.

    Suitably Modern traces the growth of a new middle class in Kathmandu as urban Nepalis harness the modern cultural resources of mass media and consumer goods to build modern identities and pioneer a new sociocultural space in one of the world's "least developed countries." Since Nepal's "opening" in the 1950s, a new urban population of bureaucrats, service personnel, small business owners, and others have worked to make a space between Kathmandu's old (and still privileged) elites and its large (and growing) urban poor. Mark Liechty looks at the cultural practices of this new middle class, examining such phenomena as cinema and video viewing, popular music, film magazines, local fashion systems, and advertising. He explores three interactive and mutually constitutive ethnographic terrains: a burgeoning local consumer culture, a growing mass-mediated popular imagination, and a recently emerging youth culture. He shows how an array of local cultural narratives - stories of honor, value, prestige, and piety - flow in and around global narratives of "progress, " modernity, and consumer fulfillment. Urban Nepalis simultaneously adopt and critique these narrative strands, braiding them into local middle-class cultural life. Building on both Marxian and Weberian understandings of class, this study moves beyond them to describe the lived experience of "middle classness" - how class is actually produced and reproduced in everyday practice. It considers how people speak and act themselves into cultural existence, carving out real and conceptual spaces in which to produce class culture.

  3. Far out : countercultural seekers and the tourist encounter in Nepal

    Liechty, Mark, 1960-
    Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

    Westerners have long imagined the Himalayas as the world's last untouched place and repository of redemptive power and wisdom. Beatniks, hippie seekers, spiritual tourists, mountain climbers diverse groups of people have traveled there over the years, searching for their own personal Shangri-La. In Far Out, Mark Liechty traces the Western fantasies that captured the imagination of tourists in the decades after World War II, asking how the idea of Nepal shaped the everyday cross-cultural interactions that it made possible. Emerging from centuries of political isolation but eager to engage the world, Nepalis struggled to make sense of the hordes of exotic, enthusiastic foreigners. They quickly embraced the phenomenon, however, and harnessed it to their own ends by building tourists' fantasies into their national image and crafting Nepal as a premier tourist destination. Liechty describes three distinct phases: the postwar era, when the country provided a Raj-like throwback experience for rich Americans; Nepal's emergence as an exotic outpost of hippie counterculture in the 1960s; and its rebranding into a hip adventure destination, which began in the 1970s and continues today. He shows how Western projections of Nepal as an isolated place inspired creative enterprises and, paradoxically, allowed locals to participate in the global economy. Based on twenty-five years of research, Far Out blends ethnographic analysis, a lifelong passion for Nepal, and a touch of humor to produce the first comprehensive history of what tourists looked for and found on the road to Kathmandu.

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