This doctoral research by Saumya Pandeay brings ethnographic study of deep history, science, and political economy to contemporary debates in social and political theory on geological instability. She follows the world’s second most sought after resource, sand, as it erodes, moves, gets transported and extracted from the Himalayan rivers across Nepal mountains and Nepal-India floodplains. She develops new conversations in the study of sovereignty, border-making, and forms of legislating and governing granular particles. Based on 12 months of ethnographic study and six months of archival research, she examines how the sediments’ deep past, materiality and agency are “naturalized” on a day-to-day basis for the prognostication of Nepal’s politics, economy, and sovereignity at a time of melting Himalayan glaciers and rising Bay of Bengal sea levels.
- Funded by: Research Council of Norway (NRC); Special Research Fund (BOF), PhD writing grant; Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO), fieldwork grant.
- Time period: 2020-2025
- People Involved: Saumya Pandey; Bert Suykens (supervisor)