2026/07/15 · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Indian and Buddhist Studies #Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nepal #South Asian Studies and Conflicts
paper · doi:10.1093/9780190685065.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2026/07/15 · openalex created_date 2026/07/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/17
Abstract The Himalayas are not just mountains. They are also not just places for mountaineering, exploring, or extracting commodities. The Himalayan region is dynamic. Spanning eight contemporary nation-states, the region is home to great diversity of people, languages, political formations, and ecosystems. It is also a region that is frequently imagined through siloed disciplinary perspectives, for its beautiful mountain vistas and geography, or its anthropological complexity. These perspectives developed during European colonial expansion in the region, which has had long-lasting repercussions for the making of borders and nation-states as well as academic disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of the Himalayas provides an overview of the many ways that the Himalayas as a region are conceptualized and studied from the perspective of the people of the Himalayas and academics across multiple fields, including anthropology, history, geology, geography, and religious studies. It engages with crucial themes for understanding this region in both local and global contexts, including through the lenses of relationships between Himalayan communities and their environments, political formations, international relations, race, ethnicity, language, gender, religion, economics, and infrastructures. This handbook refuses the limitations of colonially-imposed boundaries, and instead emphasizes the themes of diversity, change, and connectedness to understand how the study of the Himalayas has developed and how it continues to develop in conversation with the communities of the region.