We are very pleased to introduce a second special issue of HIMALAYA in 2023, in this instance titled “Writing with Care: Ethnographies from the Margins of Tibet and the Himalayas”. Curated by guest editors Harmandeep Kaur Gill and Theresia Hofer, this issue is an important contribution to a relatively recent, more conscious, effort to diversify and deepen the discourse within area studies, emphasising the voices and perspectives of ordinary people, and especially of those living at the margins of mainstream society.
The guest editors have brought together a collection that challenges and rearticulates social categories like gender, class, and disability. They emphasize the need to look beyond fixed generalizations and to embrace the complexities and contradictions of individual lives. This approach, rooted in feminist and decolonial methodologies, not only enriches our academic understanding but also connects us more deeply with the human aspects of the subjects we study. Writing with care, as the guest editors put, is to ‘enable the reader to connect with people as individual personalities and not merely as members of social and third-person categories.’
