Tension
Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas
$83.85
- Paperback
238 pages
- Release Date
16 March 2026
Summary
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.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781478033295 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1478033290 |
| Author: | Nikita Kaur Simpson |
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Imprint: | Duke University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 238 |
| Release Date: | 16 March 2026 |
| Weight: | 327g |
| Dimensions: | 152mm x 229mm |
| Series: | Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography |
You Can Find This Book In
Critics Review
“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
“The strength of [Tension] lies in how it invites rethinking on how tension studies can extend the social determinants and move to a more relational, processual, and unevenly distributed experience. The book opens space for a nuanced scholarship that remains attentive to both lived experience and structural change.”—Ranu Sherpa, South Asian Review
Nikita Kaur Simpson
Nikita Kaur Simpson is Reader in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London.
Returns
This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.