David Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of All Souls. He was Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography from 2009-2012. His doctoral research (1982-4) was on the traditional, Vajrayana Buddhism of the Newars and on Newar social organization, in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. He has carried out fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley on many subsequent occasions, broadening his interests to include politics and ethnicity, healers, mediums, and popular approaches to misfortune, and religious change, in particular the history and effects of the newly introduced Theravada Buddhist movement. In 1991 he did three months’ exploratory fieldwork on Buddhist priests in Japan. For eight years he taught at Brunel University, west London, the first British university to introduce a Master’s course in medical anthropology. For three years from 2002-5 he held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for research into the social history and practice of activism in Nepal (for the academic year 2003-4 he combined this with a Visiting Professorship at the Research Institute for Cultures and Languages of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies).
MA, DPhil University of Oxford
Anthropology of South Asia, East Asia, Buddhism, Hinduism, traditional urbanism, healers and their relation to religion, ritual and symbolism, politics, ethnicity, and activism.
Books
2013 |
British Gurkha Pension Policies and Ex-Gurkha Campaigns: A Review, 2013, Reading: Centre for Nepal Studies UK (available at www.cnsuk.org.uk). |
2005 |
Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal, 2005, Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA and London. |
2001 |
The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes, 2001, OUP: Delhi. |
1992 |
Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual, 1992, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. |
Edited books
Selected recent articles
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2012
‘Uncomfortable Antinomies: Going Beyond Methodological Nationalism in Social and Cultural Anthropology’, AAS Working Papers in Social Anthropology 24, 2012, pp. 1-16.
‘Fluidity, Hubridity, Performativity: How Relevant are Social Scientific Buzzwords for Nepal’s Constitution Building?’, In C. Mishra and O. Gurung (eds)Â Ethnicity and Federalization in Nepal, Kathmandu: Central Dept of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, 2012, pp. 91-102
2009
‘The Awkward Social Science? Anthropology on Schools, Elections, and Revolution in Nepal’ JASO-online (NS) 1(2): 115-40
‘The Uses of Max Weber: Legitimation and Amnesia in Buddhology, South Asian History, and Anthropological Practice Theory’, In Peter Clarke (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 48-62.
2008
2008 ‘Democracy and Ethnic Organizations in Nepal’ (with Mrigendra Karki) in D.N. Gellner & K. Hachhethu (eds) Local Democracy in South Asia: The Micropolitics of Democratization in Nepal and its Neighbours, pp. 105-27. Delhi: Sage.
2007
‘The Sociology of Activism in Nepal: Some Preliminary Considerations’ (with Mrigendra Karki) in Ishii et al. (eds) Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal (Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia Vol. 2), pp. 361-97. Delhi: Manohar.
‘Democracy in Nepal: Four Models’ Seminar 576: 50-6.
(with S. LeVine) ‘All in the Family: Money, Kinship, and Theravada Monasticism in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal’ in R.B. Chhetri & L.P. Uprety (eds) Observations on the Changing Societal Mosaic of Nepal (Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 10) , pp. 141-73. Kathmandu: Central Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tribhuvan University.
‘Caste, Ethnicity and Inequality in Nepal’ Economic and Political Weekly 42(20): 1823-8.
‘Nepal and Bhutan in 2006: A Year of Revolution’ Asian Survey 47(1): 80-6
2005
‘The Emergence of Conversion in a Hindu-Buddhist Polytropy: The Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, c. 1600-1995′ Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(4): 755-80.
2004
‘Children’s Voices from Kathmandu and Lalitpur, Nepal’ Journal of Asian and African Studies 68: 1-47.
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List of Articles and Book Chapters
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List of Book Reviews