Industrial Development in Uncertain Times: Industrial Labour, Maoist Revolution and Natural Disaster in Nepal; an ethnography.

• Applicant: Dr. Michael Hoffmann
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 386335074

Natural disasters, armed conflicts and uprisings: The world is experiencing a period of uncertainty and destabilization. The effects are felt strongly in the world's poorest regions. This project focuses on a country that is particularly affected: Nepal. There is a political and economic crisis that has lasted since the end of the Maoist revolution in 2006. The record earthquake in April 2015 with thousands of deaths also destroyed large parts of the infrastructure in many areas of the country. This research project takes an anthropological perspective on how industrial development is taking place during these times of extreme uncertainty and crises.The aim of the project is to make an empirical as well as theoretical contribution to the study of contemporary industrialization processes in times of great uncertainty by highlighting the complex ways in which both armed conflicts and natural disasters shape labour relations in an industrial environment. Instead of searching for grand alternative models for the contemporary predicament of industrial labour in the global south, this project focuses on concrete local industrial field sites in Nepal, which are marked by a history of armed conflict and natural disaster. In this milieu of great uncertainty, which seems characteristic of many places in the global South, the project aims to develop an ethnographically informed theory for the grasp of industrialization under conditions of great uncertainty. How do social relations within a factory change after a Maoist revolution? Can an industrial workplace be used to manage trauma after an earthquake? Such and other questions are investigated by the project.This study will be primarily based on a nine month long ethnographic fieldwork within food factories in Kathmandu and in their immediate environment. Over the course of nine months, I intend to visit all factories within the area and conduct surveys with employers, employees and labour associations to get a general overview of labour conditions. One of my aims is to understand how workers conceptualize, understand and evaluate their work at different levels of the industrial hierarchy and in different spatial arenas (within/outside the factory). I will select two or three enterprises that represent different types of shop floor culture for extensive investigation that will continue throughout the fieldwork. Thus, a major part of the research will be a comparative study of different shop floors within one area. Industrialization in times of political crisis and disaster also represents one of the crucial issues in other South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Research in these domains can contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of how industrialists, managers and workers deal with these phenomena, as well as to the elaboration of novel approaches at the levels of policy, public debate and community activism.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants