The Tin State

Abstract

What does change look, sound, and feel like? After Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes, everything is remade in tin. Walking through this newly reflective landscape, we see how things are transformed in both material and political terms, as post-disaster reconstruction proceeds in tandem with the process of post-conflict federal restructuring. This short piece of flash ethnography takes us beyond the immediate destruction and trauma into the sensory world of the post-earthquake ‘tin state’, offering a view into how people experience the long-term shifts in sensibility that both environmental and social change provoke.