"We Will Not Die Until We Achieve Prosperity": A Narrative Inquiry into a Nepali Book Launch Program

Abstract

Book launch programs are frequently seen as arenas in which national fears, hopes, and conflicted visions of development are told and discussed in public, especially in contexts like those of Nepal. Here, this study uses a case study analysis of the launch of a book, Sampurna Nepali le Pratigya Garaun: Sambriddhi Prapta Nagari Marne Chhainau ("All Nepalis Pledge: We Will Not Die until We Achieve Prosperity") written by Hari Prasad Pandey, which took place in Kathmandu. In the light of the events observed in the field and the reflections of the author and seven invited speakers – comprising a former prime minister, a former central bank governor, a sitting member of parliament, senior journalists and leaders from the political spectrum – the study poses the following questions: What narratives do the actors build about the economic condition of Nepal, how do they link these narratives with their own personal biographies and what is their collective vision of the future of prosperity? The analysis, based on Clandinin and Connelly's three-dimensional space of narrative as temporality, sociality and place, reveals five interrelated themes: the author's autobiography of scarcity and self-making; the re-interpretation of ideological conversion as economic parable; contestation over the individual-effort/structural theories of national development; the use of kinship and patronage narratives to legitimate the authority of the book and who may narrate the nation; and the gendered and institutional asymmetries that are evident in who is allowed to narrate the nation. The results indicate that the event of the book launch was not a celebratory event but rather a contested field of narrative, where prosperity was promised, qualified and re-narrated by each speaker in the context of their own positioning. The study extends the use of narrative inquiry to contexts beyond education and health to the literary and civic events and provides implications for practice and policy with regard to the ways in which personal narratives of hardship are mobilized in Nepali population discourses on development.