Fernanda Pirie
Order and Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Ladakh [book review]
One day in 1999, a group of Buddhist monks beat up a magazine vendor on a street in Leh and destroyed the current issues of a magazine he was selling. The monks were offended by an article that was critical of Ladakhi Buddhist monasteries. The organization that published the magazine was quite angry about the […]
The Peaceful Moral Order in a Ladakhi Village [journal article review]
In at least one Ladakhi community, the villagers are convinced that the basic order of life is harmony, unity, and peacefulness. A recent journal article by Fernanda Pirie—her third major piece published in the past year—discusses the strategies people in the remote village of Photoksar have for managing conflicts. Nearly a year ago a book […]
Ladakhi Morality Based on Secular Values, Not on Buddhism [journal article review]
The practices and beliefs of Buddhism are quite important to Ladakhis but they do not form the basis of their peacefulness, according to the research of one anthropologist. Fernanda Pirie argues in a recent journal article that the Buddhist villagers she studied in Ladakh fundamentally do not have a cosmological view of their moral universe. […]
Politics, Power, and Equality in Traditional Ladakh [anthology chapter review]
Although there are many inequalities in rural Ladakh, the Ladakhi villagers have a variety of social institutions that try to minimize the stresses that differing social statuses can produce. A chapter by Fernanda Pirie in a recent book on Ladakh explores the role of power and politics in rural villages, particularly the implications of the […]
