Anthropologist at Laboratoire d’ethnologie et de sociologie comparative (LESC - Centre for Ethnology and Comparative Sociology)
Since 1980 Gisèle Krauskopff has been working on the Himalayan region, mainly Nepal. She began her research in a low-altitude valley (Dang) among the Tharu, once-mobile peasants who developed the forests and marshes for the benefit of invisible powers. She studied these deities by combining fieldwork and archive collections research (in Nepal, India and England) and by visiting the sites of former Hindu principalities as far as the northwest Nepalese highlands. The increasing upheaval Nepal has been experiencing since 1990 – particularly on the ethnic political scene – has led her to extend her study to include all of the lowlands as far as Assam, India. Since 2001, relying on her cross-disciplinary knowledge of the Himalayan regions, she opened a new field of research dedicated to Himalayan tribal art, tracing their local uses and the transformation they undergo as they circulate on the so-called “primitive” art market and in collections.
Keywords
Himalaya
Terai
Tharu
territory
rituals
politics
tribal art
masks
woodwork
Regional fields
Asia, Himalaya, Nepal, Terai, Assam
Voir en ligne : http://www.mae.u-paris10.fr/lesc/sp...