Matthäus Rest

In Austria, the Krampus has recently witnessed an unprecedented boom. Since the early 2000s, the number of troupes and organized events has skyrocketed. Most of these can be termed 'invented traditions' in Hobsbawm's sense, as there are only a handful of places with a history of the practice from before the mid-twentieth century. Despite the vast differences between regions, young men in all of them dress up in masks that invoke associations with the devil or demons, wear long fur suits and roam the streets scaring and attacking onlookers with the switches they carry. Investigating contemporary Krampus practices in rural Austria, we argue that they serve as important sources of identity making, at the centre of which are relations between men and women, as well as between ethnic Austrians and immigrants. Through an engagement with anthropological discussions on identity, our article will suggest that the recent Krampus boom is indicative of new forms of white identity politics in Europe.

For a generation, people in Kathmandu have been waiting for a large drinking water diversion project to relieve them of a severe water shortage. Recounting the history of the Melamchi Water Supply Project through interviews, project documentation, and media reports, this article argues that an analysis of unfinished infrastructure has to take into account the recalcitrance of more-than-human forms, in particular matter like water and rock, as well as institutions like government ministries and international donor agencies. In the case of Melamchi, the lack of control over both matter and such institutional actors delayed the completion of the project – as is the case with a number of large-scale hydropower projects in the country. Despite this obvious inability to complete infrastructures, elites have built the promise of a prosperous future for Nepal on its water resources and the export of electricity. By conceptualizing Melamchi as an infrastructural meshwork in Ingold’s understanding and Nepal as an unfinished hydraulic state, I aim to contribute to the growing literature complicating Wittfogel’s idea of the hydrosocial.

If Ulrich Beck’s definition of ‘risk society’ describes societies increasingly structured by preoccupations with future environmental threats and related insecurities created by modernization, then Nepal’s hydropower community would appear to be quite the opposite, propelled into environmental denial by twin demands for domestic electricity and revenue earned through hydroelectric export. Our research reveals that prior to the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the hydropower community was engaging in what Eviatar Zerubavel calls ‘socially organized denial,’ largely ignoring the uncertainties associated with seismic activity. Earthquakes and tremors were viewed as unavoidable realities that should not impede hydropower development. This denial, we argue, was shaped not only by local political realities and demand for electricity, but also by a larger desire to capitalize on available funds from international finance, which are highly contingent upon Nepal presenting itself as a ‘safe’ zone for investment. Our study focuses on the elites of Nepal’s hydro community: the developers, investors, water experts, and government officials who occupy the ‘upstream’ positions at which scientific knowledge is produced and adjudicated. On one hand, the denial or omission of earthquake potential that we witnessed seems to identify the ineluctable challenges that Nepal faces in attempting to integrate its economy into global markets; on the other hand, it indicates the desire of the private sector to reap profits from hydropower in spite of obvious geophysical dangers. These dangers, we argue, are a bankable risk for these elites. However, for the people directly affected by new hydropower infrastructures, these are risks and uncertainties threatening already vulnerable livelihoods.

Contested since 1990, the Arun-3 dam in Nepal has so far generated more heat than hydropower involving a host of complex negotiations between its advocates and critics on the local, national and transnational levels. Cancelled after a complaint before the World Bank Inspection Panel in 1995, work is soon to be resumed. An Indian public sector company interested in exporting the electricity to India will finance it. This paper focuses on how local communities have experienced the decade-long uncertainties concerning the project and the approach road to be built. Their hopes of access to markets, electrification and a modern lifestyle will be explored in the context of an understanding of development as a desiring machine and governmentality studies. I will argue for a parallel application of the two approaches to conceptualize the entanglement of desires for development and a deep sense of local powerlessness vis-a-vis external actors.

Kathmandu’s Melamchi Water Supply Project is a spectral infrastructure. 40 years in the making, it is unclear whether this river diversion scheme will ever be completed. Still, it is exacerbating the city’s water scarcity in a state that at times seems as spectral as its infrastructure projects.

Since the early 1970s, the residents of Kathmandu have been visited by a fantastic specter: the Melamchi Water Supply Project. This scheme is a plan to divert the water of a river to the city in order to cure it from a chronic water shortage. Time and again, however, this specter has proven impalpable, despite frequent announcements by the government and foreign donors. One important outcome of this spectral infrastructure is a severe lack of funding for the maintenance of the existing water network; even official sources estimate 60% of leakage. Combined with the exponential growth of the city since the Maoist insurgency in 1996, this leads to a progressive privatization of water and water infrastructure. As people are provided with water of low quality for only two hours every other day during dry season, they have to store large quantities of it in rooftop tanks. At the same time, private water companies supply a growing number of households.
My paper will argue that the lack of water poses a growing threat to political authority in Kathmandu as can be seen by daily protests in front of the headquarters of the city’s water authorities. However, the fact that the state is as elusive as its unbuilt infrastructures leaves those protesting without a clear target: due to the Maoist uprising and the still uncompleted peace process Kathmandu has not had a mayor since 2002 while the newly established Republic of Nepal is still in lack of a constitution.

Through an astute ethnography of the Thangmi’s sense of belonging, Sara
Shneiderman provides us with a timely discussion of the production of identity.
Her book is also a transparent meditation on her own role as anthropologist
in the production of Thangminess and the dilemmas associated with this
process. An important contribution to the anthropology of the Himalayas, this
book will also prove useful for scholars of migration, ritual practice and performance,
identity formation and indigenous activism far beyond.