Reframing reconstruction : trajectories of built heritage in Bhaktapur, Nepal after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake

Abstract

Reconstruction of built heritage has been a focal point within the post-disaster recovery landscape in Nepal, following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake. Within the field of heritage conservation, reconstruction remains a contentious practice, largely due to the challenges it presents to conceptualisations of heritage as permanent, contingent on historicity, and at risk. Concomitantly, within the field of disaster risk management, post-disaster reconstruction and recovery are framed as opportunities for correction, improvement, and reduction of future disaster risks. Reconstruction in Nepal is also part of a complex ecology of the quotidian, local practices of caring for the built environment that responds to philosophical approaches, religious beliefs, and regional traditions. This thesis examines reconstruction through three frames: 'reconstruction-as-restoration' which is framed by the field of heritage conservation, 'reconstruction-as-recovery' which is framed by the field of disaster risk management, and 'reconstruction-as-renewal' which is framed by local practices of care and repair. The thesis focuses on the post-disaster landscape of Bhaktapur, Nepal, tracing diverse trajectories of individual heritage reconstruction projects through a fourth frame, namely, reconstruction-in-practice, which seeks to describe both, the disjunctions between the three discursive frames of reconstruction and the gaps between discourse and practice in the city. Reconstruction of built heritage is examined as a negotiation between individual and community aspirations, local governance, and national and international policy. I explore themes of modernity and tradition, local and global, fragment and whole, not as binaries but relationalities mediating Bhaktapur's post-disaster heritage reconstruction. The central finding of this research is that reconstruction not only functions as a form of heritage making, negotiating old and new values, collective memories, and associations, but equally as a form of urbanisation that contributes to the economy of Bhaktapur as a city increasingly dependent on heritage tourism. Multiple forms of authorisation, bureaucracy, and ritual underpin reconstruction in Bhaktapur, navigating community participation and formal governance structures at the city, state, and international scales. But the outcomes of reconstruction are also a negotiation with religious practices, (re)building traditions, and the deployment of various forms of heritage and disaster 'expertise'. Materials, technologies, and aesthetics are politically deployed to erase or reclaim historical narratives through reconstruction, curating the degree of change and continuity for listed heritage, religious places, homes as well as neighbourhoods, in attempts to create a unified aesthetic. Both disaster and modernity are forces to be contended with, in Bhaktapur, as it (re)claims its identity as a 'heritage city' through reconstruction.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English