High frontiers : Dolpo and the changing world of Himalayan pastoralists /

Bauer conducted field research in Nepal between 1995 and 2002 and is the founder of DROKPA (meaning "nomad" in Tibetan), a nonprofit organization that provides development assistance to pastoralists in the Himalayas and Central Asia. This outgrowth of Bauer's MA thesis in range management at the University of California, Berkeley is both an ethnography of the agro-pastoralists living in the Dolpo region of Nepal bordering on Tibet and an historical analysis of the ecological, political, and economic consequences of closure of the Tibetan border since 1959 to pastoralist migration and trade. Although not an anthropologist, Bauer makes good use of ethnographic and theoretical literature on pastoralists elsewhere in the world, and he knowledgeably discusses topics such as ecological and cultural diversity, multiresource extraction, political autonomy and equality, the social foundations of reciprocity and communalism, the sexual division of labor, and ritual activity and belief in relation to the requisites of animal husbandry and geographic mobility. He also presents a valuable balance between recognizing the ways that historical contexts and political and environmental constraints affect the lives of the people of Dolpo and emphasizing their agency and creativity in responding to the pressures of nation-states and international development agencies. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. B. Tavakolian Denison University