ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the landscape of Nepal Central Highland along its diverse ecological terrain and the inhabitants on the southern slope of the Himalaya as a part of the larger Asian Highland. Through a review of the social and anthropological literature, the chapter also provides sketches of themes undertaken in past studies and representation of people and place. I suggest that the Himalayan study was started by looking at the region as terra incognita in the eyes of Western science and largely fixated on imagining the region as an ‘interface’ between India and Tibet. The trope of an ‘interface’ significantly influenced later studies of the Himalaya as a region and represented Nepal as an ever romantic and never colonised country with orientalising flair. The ground knowledge generated by the ethnographic works, however, emphasised the need for studying the place and people in their own evolving dynamism. Contemporary anthropological studies going beyond the traditional studies of bounded caste and ethnic communities are now reorienting to the study of identity politics, rebellion, and resistance by the subaltern in redefining democracy and the state entangled in transnational processes.
