Roads of change: political transition and state formation in Nepal's agrarian districts

This paper explores the political field that has opened up in the wake of the recent civil war in Nepal. We focus on cultural-political developments in agrarian districts, where some of the most intriguing openings, and indeed the most pernicious closures, can be witnessed (as opposed to the national-state restructuring that commands more media and popular attention). Our research asks what spaces open up in the emerging political field at the district scale to entrench or transform dominant cultural codes and sedimented histories of socio-economic inequality. Preliminary research identifies specific sectors of local governance that have emerged as significant sites of struggle over the shape and meaning of democracy', namely forest management and infrastructure development. The primary contribution of the paper lies in specifying an analytical approach to the study of post-conflict' governance at the local scale via three conceptual terrains of inquiry - governance and planning, political subjectivity, and cultural politics. The ultimate objective is to develop a framework for assessing the conditions of possibility for a democratic restructuring of economy and society to accompany the official political institutions of liberal democracy.