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While many deaf organizations around the world have adopted an
ethno-linguistic framing of deafness, the meanings and consequences
of this perspective vary across cultural contexts, and relatively
little scholarship exists that explores this framework from an
anthropological perspective. In this book, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
presents an accessible examination of deafness in Nepal. As a
linguistic anthropologist, she describes the emergence of Nepali
Sign Language and deaf sociality in the social and historical
context of Nepal during the last decades before the Hindu Kingdom
became a secular republic. She then shows how the adoption of an
ethno-linguistic model interacted with the ritual pollution model,
or the prior notion that deafness results from bad karma. Her focus
is on the impact of these competing and co-existing understandings
of deafness on three groups: signers who adopted deafness as an
ethnic identity, homesigners whose ability to adopt that identity
is hindered by their difficulties in acquiring Nepali Sign
Language, and hearing Nepalis who interact with Deaf signers.
Comparing these contexts demonstrates that both the
ethno-linguistic model and the ritual pollution model, its seeming
foil, draw on the same basic premise: that both persons and larger
social formations are mutually constituted through interaction.
Signing and Belonging in Nepal is an ethnography that studies a
rich and unique Deaf culture while also contributing to larger
discussions about social reproduction and social change.
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