Rendering Reconciliation and Reconstruction Technical: Engineering, the Rule of Law, and Depoliticizing Effects on Disaster Recovery and Transitional Justice in Nepal

The year 2015 saw the convergence of several nationally significant events in Nepal, including the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), two devastating earthquakes, and the creation of a National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) to coordinate post-earthquake reconstruction. In this thesis, I discuss reconciliation and reconstruction as they are conceptualized through Nepal’s TRC and NRA, respectively. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews and document analysis, I consider how discourses of development and national unity are embedded in state projects of reconstruction and reconciliation and what sorts of knowledge and expertise are prioritized in these processes. Using a critical development framework, I argue that by narrowly focussing on specialized domains of engineering and law, respectively, the NRA’s housing grant program and the TRC’s reconciliation processes are rendered technical and enact individualized, depoliticized, “development”-oriented approaches that leave intact ongoing structural violence, national exclusion, and inequalities.M.A