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This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia, built around a case study of the Nepal ethnic group that lives in the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal. Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, it critically examines the relationship between culture and politics in a geographical space that is home to a diverse range of ethnic identities, showing how new modes of political representation, cultural activism, and everyday politics have emerged from the region.

The societies in the Himalayan borderlands have undergone wide-ranging transformations, as the territorial reconfiguration of modern nation-states since the mid-twentieth century and the presently increasing trans-Himalayan movements of people, goods and capital, reshape the livelihoods of communities, pulling them into global trends of modernisation and regional discourses of national belonging. This book explores the changes to native senses of place, the conception of border - simultaneously as limitations and opportunities - and what the authors call "affective boundaries," "livelihood reconstruction," and "trans-Himalayan modernities." It addresses changing social, political, and environmental conditions that acknowledge growing external connectivity even as it emphasises the importance of place.

Since the nineteenth century, ethnic Koreans have represented a small yet significant portion of the population of the Russian Far East, but until now, the phenomenon has been largely understudied. Based on extensive historical and ethnographic research, this is the first book in English to chart the contemporary social life of Koreans in the complex borderland region. Dispelling the commonly held notion that Koreans were completely removed from the region during the country's attempt to 'cleanse' its borders in 1937, Hyun Gwi Park reveals timely new insights into the historical and current experiences of Koreans living along the Eurasian frontier.

Major state-led infrastructural development projects in the Himalayan region have been underway for several years, such as the building of highways connecting Nepal and Tibet, the widening of roads throughout North Bengal, Sikkim, and Tibet, and the planning of extensions to the Beijing–Lhasa railroad. Some of these projects – driven by the need to open up new markets for surplus commodities in the name of “free” trade and bilateral cooperation – have led to the rerouting of established trade routes and increased environmental damage to the region's hilly topography. In an area of Asia that has long been characterized by geographical representations highlighting its supposed marginality and remoteness (for example, “the chicken's neck” or “the roof of the world”), these searches for new openings for capital have led to the erasure or obfuscation of certain places in tandem with the highlighting of other, more profitable places for a variety of hegemonic political and economic goals. This article takes as its basis oral narratives of traders in the region, demonstrating how the re-routing of trade routes have often resulted in diverse attempts to make trading goods and places more coherent in the face of such powerful economic shifts. I argue for the need to avoid simple “top–down” vs. “bottom–up” models of hegemony and resistance in order to obtain a more nuanced picture of the tensions and overlaps between large-scale economic shifts and smaller-scale practices in the region.

While India has been a popular subject of scholarly analysis in the past decade, the majority of that attention has been focused on its major cities. This volume instead explores contemporary urban life in a smaller city located in India's Northeast borderland at a time of dramatic change, showing how this city has been profoundly affected by armed conflict, militarism, displacement, interethnic tensions, and the expansion of neoliberal capitalism.

In this paper I examine how objects become connected to place in complex and contradictory ways. Over the past ten to fifteen years, rapid transformations in Chinese manufacturing and transportation networks have significantly altered the production, marketing, and consumption of commodities made in the Tibet Autonomous Region and traded in Kalimpong, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal. In an attempt to connect the ethnographic study of material culture with more macrolevel processes of geoeconomic change, I begin the piece with an examination of the changing production, materials, and styles of a very specific commodity, the Tibetan women's apron. I then explore traders' narratives about the values of handmade, machine-made, wool, and synthetic commodities, arguing that we ought to look beyond dichotomies of ‘old’ versus ‘new’ or ‘authentic’ versus ‘inauthentic’ objects to show in detail how the attachment of commodities to representations of place figures importantly in the contemporary study both of globalization and uneven development. Finally, I suggest that Karl Marx's notion of dead labor is useful in analyzing the recent move towards the revitalization of Tibetan wool for both the domestic Chinese industry and the global tourist industry.

It is a clear Sunday afternoon in Kalimpong, a town of about 43,000 inhabitants in the mountainous northernmost tip of the state of West Bengal. The rhododendrons are glaringly bright against the green foliage, and the air is especially pleasant after months of heavy monsoon rain and the resulting landslides that would sporadically halt transport for days on end. I walk quickly down the hill, past the Mela ground and the motor stand in the center of town, on my way to meet a man named Tsering, someone whom a friend insists I should speak with if I would like to know more about the recent history of the Lhasa–Kalimpong trade route

Grounded theory is a popular research approach in health care and the social sciences. This article provides a description of grounded theory methodology and its key components, using examples from published studies to demonstrate practical application. It aims to demystify grounded theory for novice nurse researchers, by explaining what it is, when to use it, why they would want to use it and how to use it. It should enable nurse researchers to decide if grounded theory is an appropriate approach for their research, and to determine the quality of any grounded theory research they read.

Purpose – The School of Nursing and Midwifery at De Montfort University has been consistently successful in producing student midwives who are, by the end of their chosen programme, fit for practice, purpose and award according to the DMU. This paper aims to investigate this claim.Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at De Montfort University where an innovative tripartite assessment process has been developed to support midwifery students in practice. This involves the student, his/her personal tutor and his/her clinical midwife mentor. All three are involved in the planning of appropriate learning experiences to facilitate the student in meeting the clinical learning outcomes, utilising a personal professional portfolio.Findings – The paper finds that the close working relationships between the placement providers and the university have improved the assessment of practice and enhanced the student experience. Clinical midwife mentors have commented on how well the tripartite approach works and ...

Gaining approval for clinical research can be a long and drawn out process. For midwives considering clinical research the process of gaining access and approval needs to be explored well in advance. This article outlines the process of gaining approval and access based upon the author's experiences in a study currently being conducted on midwifery practice in the third stage of labour. This particular project involved approval from several institutions and individuals. Approval was required from the university where students who may be observed were studying, approval for the researcher to be released to conduct the research and approval from the NHS Trusts and Ethics Committee where observation of clients and interviews with midwives was to be conducted. The important issue of indemnity will also be explored

This paper suggests that midwives re-evaluate management strategies for the third stage of labour and reflect upon the widely-held belief that intervention at this time is an improvement on the normal physiological processes and is without risk. Midwives are challenged to embrace a normal rather than a risk focus in light of support from WHO, who suggest ‘definite conclusions about the value of active management of the third stage in healthy low-risk populations cannot yet be drawn’ (WHO, 1999). If midwives are to face this challenge they need to be proactive in normalising the third stage, developing expertise in expectant management and revisiting skills in detecting those women deviating from normal in whom an active third stage may be appropriate.

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