Katharine published the paper with Shyam Kunwar, Lagan Rai, Elsie Lewison, and Sarah Schneiderman, which explores local ethical logic in Nepal’s community-based road-building program, challenging corruption discourses by highlighting the contested legitimacy of rules and competing visions of rural infrastructure.
The conversation begins with one of the field memos from Katharine's study. Through an anthropological lens, they explore how local cultural values, political dynamics, history, and social meanings shape perceptions of corruption, participation, rule-breaking, and governance.
Katharine Rankin (https://katharinenrankin.wordpress.com/) is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Cultural Politics of Markets: Economic Liberalization and Social Change in Nepal, and other academic publications related to research interests in the areas of the politics of planning and development, comparative market regulation, feminist and critical theory, neoliberal governance and social polarization.
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