After the Earth's Violent Sway: the tangible and intangible legacies of a natural disaster

大地震等自然灾害造成的物质影响是显而易见的：生命损失、流离失所、房屋被毁和文化遗产遭到破坏。然而，这种事件的长期影响不那么明显。该项目将研究2015年地震对尼泊尔社会的影响。该项目将研究公众话语，以了解社会变革;研究恢复和重塑物质文化的努力;研究档案材料，以确定以前的灾难留下的永久印记。首先，该项目将调查地震对尼泊尔正在进行的文化和政治话语的影响。尼泊尔于2006年结束了长达十年的内战，从那时起，该国的主要政治参与者一直在进行一个似乎永无止境的从印度教君主制国家向民主联邦共和国过渡的过程。大部分辩论和争论涉及尼泊尔新宪法的内容，新宪法将体现新的联邦结构，保障民主，并确保历史上被边缘化的群体和社区得到更多的包容。地震对这一进程产生了重大影响：灾后不到五个月就颁布了新宪法，但其内容证明存在很大分歧。该项目的研究人员将从2015年4月25日（第一次地震发生的当天）开始，调查灾难如何改变了关于一些关键文化和政治问题的全国辩论的方向和内容。他们的分析将集中在媒体、文学和文化产品，从报纸专栏到诗歌、歌曲和城市涂鸦（特别强调用尼泊尔语制作的材料），以及在省和大城市的采访和焦点小组讨论。第二，该项目将询问是谁决定一个依赖援助的国家被破坏的物质遗产的哪些元素值得恢复。地震破坏的早期照片显示，在加德满都的世界遗产地的瓦砾堆。这给人的印象是首都遭到广泛破坏，并导致早期媒体关注加德满都山谷文化遗产的损失。人们似乎普遍认为，恢复河谷历史建筑环境的工作将不会引起争议，国际社会将分担这一恢复工作的费用。然而，关于恢复项目的优先事项是什么，或者如何确定这些优先事项的讨论才刚刚开始。该项目将调查在多大程度上，修复地点和建筑物的选择和优先顺序是由当地认为最“珍贵”的东西驱动的，以及外部捐助者和遗产专家的评估在多大程度上。第三，该项目将对2015年地震的社会文化和政治影响与1833年和1934年政治和文化转型早期袭击尼泊尔的大地震的社会文化和政治影响进行历史比较。一些关于这些早期地震及其后果和影响的简要描述已经用尼泊尔语和英语出版（例如。Joshi 2015，Rana 2013）和几位尼泊尔记者在他们对2015年灾难的报道中提到了这些账户。然而，这些材料很少被用英语写作的学者所利用，伦敦、德里和加德满都的档案中包含了尚未出版或详细分析的同时期记录。本研究横跨三个方面，旨在确定重大灾害发生后尼泊尔社会发生了哪些变化。灾难发生后，灾前指导生活和政治决策的规则和惯例是否仍然受到重视？这样的灾难会带来什么样的变化？哪些变化是暂时的，哪些是永久的？

The physical impact of a natural disaster such as a major earthquake is immediately visible: lost lives, displaced people, destroyed houses and a shattered cultural heritage. However, the longer-term impact of such an event is less apparent. This project will study the impact that the earthquakes of 2015 had on Nepali society. It will examine public discourse to understand social change; study efforts to reclaim and reinvent material culture; and study archival material to identify the permanent marks left by previous disasters.First, the project will investigate the earthquakes' impact upon ongoing cultural and political discourse in Nepal. Nepal emerged from a ten-year civil war in 2006 and since then the country's main political players had been engaged in a seemingly interminable process of transition from a monarchical Hindu state to a democratic federal republic. Much of the debate and contention concerned the content of a new constitution for Nepal which would enshrine the new federal structure, safeguard democracy, and ensure greater inclusion of historically marginalized groups and communities. The earthquakes had a major impact upon this process: a new constitution was promulgated less than five months after the disaster, but its content proved to be highly divisive. The researchers on this project will investigate the ways in which the disaster changed the direction and content of the national debate on a number of key cultural and political issues over a three year period beginning on 25 April 2015 (the day on which the first quake occurred). Their analysis will focus on media, literary and cultural production ranging from newspaper op-ed columns to poetry, songs and urban graffiti (with a particular emphasis on material produced in Nepali), and on interviews and focus-group discussions in both provincial and metropolitan locations.Second, the project will ask who it is that decides which elements of an aid-dependent country's destroyed physical heritage is worth restoring. Early photographs of earthquake damage showed heaps of rubble in Kathmandu's world heritage sites. This gave the impression of extensive devastation in the capital and led to an early media focus on the loss of cultural heritage in the Kathmandu Valley. It seemed to be generally assumed that the restoration of the Valley's historic built environment would take place uncontentiously, and that the international community would contribute to the cost of this restoration. However, the discussion is only just beginning of what the priorities of the restoration project will be, or how they will be set. The project will investigate the extent to which the selection and prioritisation of sites and buildings for restoration is driven by what is held locally to be most 'dear', and to what extent by the evaluations of external donors and heritage experts. Third, the project will draw historical comparisons between the sociocultural and political impacts of the 2015 quakes and those of the major quakes that struck Nepal during earlier periods of political and cultural transition in 1833 and 1934. A handful of brief accounts of these earlier quakes and their aftermath and impact have been published in Nepali and English (eg. Joshi 2015, Rana 2013), and several Nepali journalists referred to these accounts in their reporting on the 2015 disaster. However, little of this material has been utilised by scholars writing in English, and archives in London, Delhi and Kathmandu contain contemporaneous accounts that have not been published or analysed in any detail. This study across the three strands aims to determine what changes in Nepali society take and have taken place after a major disaster. Do the rules and conventions that governed life and political decision-making before a disaster continue to be valued in its aftermath? What kinds of change occur as a result of such a disaster? Which of these changes is temporary and which is permanent?