BHUTAN: History, scholarship and emerging agency in the Bhutanese narrative

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief introductory profile on Bhutan and covers the wider history of academic literature on the country spanning from the ‘Golden Age’ of the traditional religious era to more contemporary works. This review of scholarship on, and of, Bhutan discusses how shifting state policies and politics have produced distinct bodies of work that include ethnography during the heights of the British colonial regime in South Asia, the rise of ‘home-grown orientalism’ with the influx of regional academic interest on Bhutan, and the upcoming generations of local scholars that incorporate greater agency and authenticity to their research. In reflecting on the challenges that Bhutanese scholarship faces in gaining legitimacy by the larger international academic audience, the need to contend with the Western gaze and to decolonise academic sites of power and methodology is emphasised in order to expand diverse ways of understanding Bhutan and its people.