Nikita Kaur Simpson, "Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas" (Duke UP, 2026)

About this episode

Dr. Nikita Kaur Simpson discusses her book on mental distress and inequality among the Gaddi people in the Western Himalayas.

In Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. 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, Dr. 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…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Nikita Kaur Simpson

Topics covered

• mental distress
• embodied inequality
• Himalayas
• Gaddi people
• ethnographic fieldwork
• cultural change
• modernity

Keywords

• tension
• mental distress
• Gaddi
• inequality
• ethnography
• Himalayas
• caste
• class
• gender

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Duke UP

Books & works: Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas

Places: Western Himalayas, Himalayas

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