Social anthropologist, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
Grégoire Schlemmer is a social anthropologist, with a PhD from the Université de Paris 10 Nanterre (2004). He has been a researcher at IRD since 2006. His work focuses on ethnic minorities that occupy two mountainous borderlands in Asia: a Himalayan valley in Nepal and a Laotian province which act as an interface between the Indo-Chinese peninsula and China. After studying religious phenomena and forms of belonging in their geopolitical and historical context, he took an interest in these peoples’ way of thinking and of thinking the world and, in doing so, of acting upon it.
Research topics
Starting with an ethnography of the religious life of a population from the Nepalese Himalayas, the Kulung Rai, his work addressed the way a so-called animist society conceives of supernatural entities—spirits—and what these representations imply. Based on the idea that the vagueness surrounding the conception of spirits lies at the very heart of the dynamics of the system built around it, this study showed that the relations maintained with spirits reveal a system of interpretation and action. By articulating them around the individual and the group, the same and the other, order and disorder, nature and the social, this structures and legitimates a relationship with the world, with the self, with others and with power.
Parallel to this, Grégoire Schlemmer has worked on Kirant indigenous movements (an ethnic group to which the Kulung belong) based in immigration zones such as Kathmandu, the eastern Terai, Sikkim and western Bengal. His interest lies in their rhetoric (oriented around an identity claim based on the search for a glorious past and the affirmation of indigenousness), the source of this rhetoric (English colonists, Hindu reformers, anti-Brahman and tribal movements) and the way the relationship with the religious and the political is reassessed.
His research has also led him to address the different ways reflexivity on the religious and identity realm emerges in the context of the opening of Kulung society onto the outside world, especially via migratory phenomena and inter-ethnic contacts.
The different facets of his work, as well as the research he is currently carrying out in Laos, all converge in his current research project. This focuses on the way in which populations of the Sino-Indian borderlands think of themselves and become integrated in a multi-ethnic environment they have contributed to, by analysing the interactions both between each other and with the centres of regional power. This research might help to understand forms of religious constructs and of inter-ethnic negotiations in a broader area, that of the Sino-Indian borderlands.
Keywords
Nepal
Himalayas
Laos
Kulung
Rai
Kirant
religious
rituals
beliefs
spirits
reflexivity
interethnic relations
socio-religious change
Selective bibliography
Full-text pdfs accessible at: https://ird.academia.edu/schlemmergrégoire
Articles
2017. "Voyageurs immobiles. La géographie idéelle des Kulung Rai du Népal. Purusartha", 2017, pp.227-247.
2015. "Questionner la question ethnique. Lecture historique et politique des appartenances culturelles au Laos", Moussons, 25, p. 5-37.
2013. "Les guérisseurs guérissent-il ou : pourquoi diviniser ?", Revue du Centre d’Etude Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centre Asiatique et Tibétaine), special issue. D’une anthropologie du chamanisme vers une anthropologie du croire, hommage à l’œuvre de Roberte Hamayon, edited by K. BUFFETRILLE, J.-L. LAMBERT, N. LUCA and A. de SALES, p. 591 - 601.
2012. "Rituals, territories and powers in the Sino-Indian margins. Introduction". Moussons, No.19, p. 19-31.
2012. "Conquérants, fils du sol ou alliés de la forêt ? Le rapport des Kulung au territoire et au pouvoir au prisme de leur cultes au dieu du sol", Moussons, No.19, 33-50.
2011. "La divination". Article (10,000 signs). Dictionnaire des faits religieux, Daniel Hervieu-Léger et Régine Azria eds. Collection Quadrige, Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, p. 97-110.
2010. "Métaphysique du désir. Intentions des esprits et (ré)actions des humains chez les Kulung (Népal)". Atelier, revue du LESC. No.34.
2009. "Jeux d’esprits. Ce que sont les esprits pour les Kulung". Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions. No.145, p. 93-108. English translation : "Presence in Spirit: How the Kulung People Perceive Spirits", Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions, 2009/1, 145. Sur cairn http://cairn-int.info/article-E_ASSR_145_0093--presence-in-spirit.htm
2007 "Rites en mouvement. A propos de Rite Hindous, transferts et transformation", G. Colas et G. Tarabout (eds.), Paris : édition de l’EHESS, EspacesTemps.net, Mensuelles, 19.06.2007. http://www.espacestemps.net/articles/rites-en-mouvement/
2004. "New Past for the Sake of a Better Future: Re-inventing the History of the Kirant in East Nepal". European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, No.25/26. P. 119-144.
Book chapters
2017 (forthcoming). "Comment dresser le portrait d’un ’dieu’ ? Revisiter la notion de ’panthéon’ à partir du cas des Kulung du Népal", M. Albert-LLorca et al. Puissances divines à l’épreuve du comparatisme - constructions, variations et réseaux relationnels. Paris : Brepol (BEHE).
2012, avec CULAS Christian et TRAN HONG HANH, "Construire et gérer les ethnicités en Asie du Sud-Est : cultures, politiques et développement", in Lagrée Stéphane (ed.) Différenciation sociale et inégalités : approches méthodologiques et transversales sur les questions de genre et d’ethnicité. Paris : AFD, (4), p. 245-292. English translation: "Construction and Management of Ethnicities in Southeast Asia Cultures, Policies and Development", Vietnamese translation: "Xây dựng và Quản lý cácDân tộc ở Đông Nam Á: văn hóa, Chính sách và Phát triển".
2011. "La politique des morts. Ancêtres, mauvais morts et modalités d’actions chez les Kulung Rai, une population de l’Himalaya". La mort collective et le politique. Construction mémorielle et ritualisation. Tokyo, COE – Université de Tokyo. Japanese translation: "Shisha ni yoru seiji — Himaraya no minzoku, Kurun-Rai zoku ni okeru senzo, jaakuna shisha, kôdôyôshiki".
2010. "Le rituel de l’Esprit Noir ou comment créer une présence pour manifester son absence". in J.-L. Durand, M. Cartry & R.Koch-Piettre, éds., Architecturer l’invisible. Autels, ligatures, écriture. Collection Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, section des sciences religieuses, issue 138. Brepols, Turnhout (Belgique), pp. 97-110.
2010. "Rai, Khambu, Subba, Kirant, etc.: ethnic labels or political and land tenure categories? Logics of identification of an ensemble of population in Nepal. Interethnic Dynamics in Asia. Ethnonyms, Considering the Other though ethnonyms, territories and rituals.C. Culas and F. Robinne (eds.). London and New Yord: Routledge. P. 42-56.
2010. "The illness is the other people: cross-representations and ritual management of alterity and illness among the Kulung (Nepal)", Interethnic Dynamics in Asia. Ethnonyms, Considering the Other through Ethnonyms, Territories and Rituals.C. Culas and F. Robinne (eds.). London and New Yord: Routledge P. 154-166.
2009. "Les vicissitudes de l’ethnonyme ’Kirant’: de l’orientalisme aux revendications identitaires". Chapter in the book : Les faiseurs d’histoire. Politique de l’origine et écrits sur le passé. G. Krauskopff ed. Paris : Société d’Ethnologie, p. 55-84.
View online : http://ceias.ehess.fr/index.php?542