Khushi and Katharine discuss Nepal’s community-based road-building initiatives, examining how these projects reveal the complex relationships between citizens, the state, and socio-economic systems. The conversation begins with a field memo from Katharine’s recent research and offers an anthropological perspective on how local cultural values, political dynamics, historical context, and social meanings influence perceptions of corruption, governance, participation, and rule-breaking.

Katharine Rankin is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Cultural Politics of Markets: Economic Liberalization and Social Change in Nepal, among other influential works focused on the politics of planning and development, comparative market regulation, feminist and critical theory, neoliberal governance, and social polarization.

Her recent article, Between Eating and Being Fed: Competing Ethics of Community-Based Road Building in Nepal, co-published with Shyam Kunwar, Lagan Rai, Elsie Lewison, and Sarah Shniederman, delves into the local ethical logics underpinning Nepal’s community-driven road-building programs. The paper challenges conventional discourses of corruption by highlighting the contested legitimacy of rules and presenting competing visions of rural infrastructure, offering a more complex understanding of community engagement in development.

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