"Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas"
Schedule
Tue Jun 23 2026 at 03:30 pm to 05:00 pm
UTC+10:00Location
Deakin Downtown | Melbourne, VI
Book Launch: Join the SSN and Nikita Simpson in launching her new book, out in 2026 from Duke University Press.About this Event
In Tension, Nikita Kaur Simpson examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.” This “tension” takes many forms: Kamzori, or weakness, in the bodies of elderly women; “Future tension” accumulating in the minds of young girls; or Opara, or black magic, afflicting whole families. Through her long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Simpson follows the ways in which Gaddi people tie this distress to broader structural changes, such as land dispossession and caste, class, tribal and gender inequality, which are growing alongside modernity and prosperity. In doing so, she shows how “tension” acts as an everyday diagnostic of the problems of cultural, economic and environmental change as they shape intimate life. At once a lived historical account, a cartography of care relations, and a multi-sensory exploration of the intimate experiences of atmosphere and body, Tension puts forth a novel theory of distress, that inequality is often determined by who is made to feel, hold, and absorb distress.
Praise
"This beautifully written book offers a glimpse into how ordinary people in the Indian Himalaya experience economic, social, and political upheaval as an intensification of tension in the domain of everyday life. Simpson’s loving attention to the texture of intimate relationships, the waning and waxing intensity of atmospheric affects, and the multiplicity of somatic orientations to tension is ethnography at its finest." - Radhika Govindrajan, author of Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas
“This is ethnography at its finest, showcasing compelling theoretical arguments rooted in the thought and experiences of individuals whose lives Simpson explores in loving detail. The book is a major contribution to medical anthropology, South Asian studies and the study of aging, exemplifying what nuanced attention to materiality, relation, atmosphere, and affect can achieve.” - Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things
Where is it happening?
Deakin Downtown, Level 12, Tower 2, Melbourne, AustraliaAUD 0.00
