Epicentre to Aftermath: Rebuilding and Remembering in the Wake of Nepal's Earthquakes

Michael Hutt · Mark Liechty · Stefanie Lotter

Sept 2021 · Cambridge University Press

About this eBook

Epicentre to Aftermath makes both empirical and conceptual contributions to the growing body of disaster studies literature by providing an analysis of a disaster aftermath that is steeped in the political and cultural complexities of its social and historical context. Drawing together scholars from a range of disciplines, the book highlights the political, historical, cultural, artistic, emotional, temporal, embodied and material dynamics at play in the earthquake aftermath. Crucially, it shows that the experience and meaning of a disaster are not given or inevitable, but are the outcome of situated human agency. The book suggests a whole new epistemology of disaster consequences and their meanings, and dramatically expands the field of knowledge relevant to understanding disasters and their outcomes.

About the author

Michael Hutt is a scholar of Nepali literature who has authored and edited fourteen books and over fifty articles and book chapters on Nepali and Himalayan topics. His most recent book was the edited volume Political Change and Public Culture in Post-1990 Nepal published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.

A cultural anthropologist by training, Mark Liechty has been a student of Nepali and South Asian culture and history for more than three decades. He is the author of three influential books on modern Nepal and a founding co-editor of the journal Studies in Nepali History and Society.

Stefanie Lotter is Senior Teaching and Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.