Himalayan Masculinities

This book offers novel and valuable insights into the often abstracted and overlooked social worlds of men in the Himalaya. Long cast through colonial and nationalist imaginaries as martial warriors, agrarian patriarchs, or peripheral actors in the Subcontinent’s struggles over power, identity, and territory, Himalayan men have rarely been the direct focus of scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic and interdisciplinary research, Himalayan Masculinities foregrounds men’s lives, experiences, and perspectives across the Himalaya - a dynamic space shaped by shifting geographies, contested borders, postcolonial anxieties, ecological precarity, and global economic transformations.

Contributors examine how masculinities in the Himalaya are made and unmade through intimate practices, migration and mobility, caste and care work, militarization, digital culture, and uneven development. In doing so, the volume challenges essentialist accounts of gender and region, revealing masculinities as mobile, relational, and deeply embedded in place. Unfolding in a region that sits at the edge of nation-states and empires, and at the intersection of local and global pressures, this collection provides an important corrective to prevailing gender scholarship and opens new directions for the study of power, identity, and belonging in South Asia and beyond.

This book will be invaluable to academics and researchers interested in the intersections of gender, power, sociology, ecology and economics within the Himalayan region. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of South Asian Studies.

Ritodhi Chakraborty is a broadly trained environmental social scientist. Over the past decade, he has collaborated with rural and indigenous communities across India, Bhutan, China, and Aotearoa New Zealand on issues of youth migration, agrarian political economy, masculinity, and the politics of climate adaptation. He is currently working on a suite of climate justice tools that explore justice-based audits of climate adaptation projects and the creation of ethical decision-support tools for Indigenous communities interested in engaging with climate finance and governance. This work is being developed through an international group of Indigenous scholars and practitioners through the Knowledge Justice Collective, which he co-leads with Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa (UBC).

Nilanjana Sen is an ethnographer and development practitioner whose work examines youth agency, ethics, and everyday decision-making. Nilanjana holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Melbourne, along with master’s degrees from King’s College London and South Asian University. Her professional experience spans governance and policy work in India, global grant management, and corporate social responsibility. Across all her projects, she is committed to public ethnography and ethical collaboration, guided by the belief that lived experiences can inform more just and imaginative futures.

Matthew Wilkinson is an ethnographer with a special focus on frontiers, borderlands, and liberalization in Asia and South Asia. His research spans a wide range of specialties, but centres on processes of rupture and disruption in complex and unsettled areas. Dr. Wilkinson holds a PhD in Development Studies from UNSW Sydney and has a special interest in unpacking ‘messy’ social and political dynamics associated with identity, development, and liberalization in India and Bangladesh.