Backstreets,Barricades,and Blackouts: Urban Terrains of Resistance in Nepal

In this paper I apply aspects of sociospatial theory to the revolutionary context of urban Nepal during the democratic uprisings of 1990. The urban spaces of Kathmandu and Patan were two of the most important sites within which power was contested, and terrains upon which space itself was contested. As I will show, the location of struggle emerged from conscious movement choices (as to tactics, efficacy of mobilization, etc) and influenced the character of collective action. An analysis of the spatial mediation of social movement agency provides us with what 1 term the ‘terrain of resistance’—the specific geographical, historical, political, economic, ecological, and cultural context of movement agency. Such analysis can provide us with important insights into why movements occur where they do, the spatiocultural specificity of movement practice, and the language by which people articulate their discontent, understood through the ‘cultural expressions of resistance’.