Masters of hybridity: how activists reconstructed Nepali society

Abstract

This article discusses the changes that activists have brought to Nepali society in relation to two key elements of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT): (1) its account of modernity and (2) its radical downplaying of human agency. ANT, contrary to the way it tends to be understood, deserves to be seen, at least in Latour's treatment, as a major theory of modernity. As such, it is important and enlightening, even though its attack on human agency – at least when discussing activism – is unhelpful. On this point Ian Hacking's notion of ‘making up people’ provides a better guide. The main example explored is the new kinds of ethnic identity that have achieved state recognition and become politically influential in Nepal over the last thirty years. The case of one ethnic and religious activist, Dr Keshabman Shakya, is used to illustrate the argument. Based on notions of human rights, rather similar processes of ‘making up people’ have also occurred with other minority groups, most strikingly in the case of the ‘third gender’, a context in which Nepal is famously ‘progressive’ compared to other nation-states in the region.