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Suitably Modern traces the growth of a new middle class in Kathmandu as urban Nepalis harness the modern cultural resources of mass media and consumer goods to build modern identities and pioneer a new sociocultural space in one of the world's "least developed countries." Since Nepal's "opening" in the 1950s, a new urban population of bureaucrats, service personnel, small business owners, and others have worked to make a space between Kathmandu's old (and still privileged) elites and its large (and growing) urban poor. Mark Liechty looks at the cultural practices of this new middle class, examining such phenomena as cinema and video viewing, popular music, film magazines, local fashion systems, and advertising. He explores three interactive and mutually constitutive ethnographic terrains: a burgeoning local consumer culture, a growing mass-mediated popular imagination, and a recently emerging youth culture. He shows how an array of local cultural narratives--stories of honor, value, prestige, and piety--flow in and around global narratives of "progress," modernity, and consumer fulfillment. Urban Nepalis simultaneously adopt and critique these narrative strands, braiding them into local middle-class cultural life. Building on both Marxian and Weberian understandings of class, this study moves beyond them to describe the lived experience of "middle classness"--how class is actually produced and reproduced in everyday practice. It considers how people speak and act themselves into cultural existence, carving out real and conceptual spaces in which to produce class culture.

This book explores why Nepal's hydropower sector is one of its few development success stories. Unlike most other 'developing' countries, in Nepal local firms design and build hydropower facilities using Nepali engineers, builders and labor. Nepal has largely avoided the trap whereby most poor countries are forced to accept energy infrastructure projects that are foreign designed, funded and built - typically resulting in debt, dependency and unsustainability. It traces the struggle between two competing development paradigms: one that emphasizes gradual national human capacity building - at the expense of speed and efficiency - and another that emphasizes rapid, large-scale infrastructure building - at the risk of unsustainability and dependency. At stake is whether what passes for 'development' benefits the countries in which it occurs, or the banks and investors that finance capital-intensive projects. What Went Right brings a vision for sustainable development into vigorous conversation with development strategies that have proven to be less productive.

Far Out charts the history of Western countercultural longing for Nepal that made the country, and Kathmandu in particular, a premier tourist destination in the twentieth century. Anthropologist and historian Mark Liechty describes three distinct phases: the immediate post-war era when the country provided a Raj-like throwback experience for rich foreigners (mainly Americans), Nepal s emergence as the most exotic outpost of hippie counterculture in the 1960s and early 70s, and, finally, the Nepali state s rebranding of itself as an adventure destination from the 1970s on. Liechty is attuned to how the dynamics of mid-twentieth century globalizationthe Cold War and shifting international relations, modernization and development ideologies, the rise of consumerist middle classes, increased mobility and the birth of mass tourism, and emerging global youth counterculturesdrew Nepal into the web of geopolitical, economic, and sociocultural transformations that shaped the modern world. But Liechty doesn t want to tell the story of tourism as something that just happened to Nepalis. He shows how Western projections of Nepal as an isolated place inspired creative Nepali enterprises and paradoxically gave locals the opportunity to participate in the highly coveted global economy. The result is a readable cultural history of a place that has been in many ways defined by a (sometimes bizarre) cultural encounter. The author s lifelong interest in Nepal and his almost twenty-five years of research make his account both sophisticated and empathicbut not without a touch of humor."

Cruciformed is a reader-response, narrative-critical study of Mark's gospel focusing on the two main components of any story: character and plot. It explores how readers will identify with the role of the disciples who are portrayed realistically as embodying both good and bad traits and how the chief plot device is the way that expectations of both disciples and readers are brought to surprising fulfillment and reversal as they interact with Jesus. Contents: Reading the Gospel as Literature; Components of the Markan Narrative; Mark's Characters and Plot; Structuring the Story; Prologue: Disorientation in the Wasteland; Scene One: Healings and Oppostition; Scene Two: Riddles and Rejection; Scene Three: Feedings and Frustration; Scene Four: Predictions and Delusion; Scene Five: Prophecies and Confrontations; Scene Six: Crucifixion and Desertion; Sequel: Reorientation for the Future; Cruciformed Readers in Today's World; Annotated Bibliography.

At the time of Christ, world politics was an ebb and flow of colliding empires and forces. The world knew only dynastic succession and rule by force. Israel was swept up in this world. Her expectations of deliverance, while diverse, had in common the anticipation of violent liberation by an alliance of God, the expected one (Theo), and Israel's forces. Her vision included the subjugation of the world to Yahweh. Any messianic claimant would be expected to fulfill this hope. Mark's story of Jesus must be read against such expectations of military power. Mark knows that Jesus' plan of salvation differed radically from this. Rather than liberation through revolution, it involved deliverance through humble, loving service and cross-bearing. However, the disciples follow Jesus but do not understand Jesus' purpose. They constantly expect war. So, the Gospel is then read from Mark's full understanding and the disciples' flawed perspective. In this first volume of Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Keown backgrounds Mark and the political situations of the world at the time. He then unpacks Mark 1:1--8:29 as Jesus seeks to show the disciples he is Messiah while drawing out the deep irony of their incomprehension.