How do scholars balance the need to write quickly and the need to write well? Pressures to “publish or perish” and the rise of “visibility indices” have led many of us to write in ways that will be recognized by our institutions, rather than in the other ways we also think and reflect. Some academics now are calling for a turn to slow scholarship, but this may be a luxury only the elite can afford. In a time of crisis, writing slowly does not work; instead, we need to write swiftly. Recently, I and many people who have conducted research in Nepal found ourselves under pressure to write quickly while still maintaining our academic integrity.

The April 25th earthquake in Nepal proved devastating for the country and spurred many in the anthropological world to action and comment. In the days after the quake, and propelled forward by the major May 12th aftershock, academics in the US, Europe and Asia found themselves overwhelmed by requests for interviews and op-eds, and many of us were eager to do something. I felt paralyzed and incompetent, sitting in Austin, Texas, trying to finish the semester, working closely with local student groups and NRN (Non-Resident Nepali) organizations and operating at a high level of distraction. Social media was afire with check-ins of who had survived, where the greatest damage had occurred and what resources were needed to keep people alive on a day-to-day basis. I found myself pulled into the social media world and addicted to email and messaging as I had never been before. Many of us sought to raise funds and awareness in our own communities, to establish contact with those we care about in Nepal, and to write brief articles as we felt able for media venues. After the initial flurry of media contacts, several of those who had written about the disaster were contacted by Anthropology News to write an article for their online forum. We hoped to get someone familiar with facts on the ground, yet many anthropologists who were in Nepal were dealing with everyday needs of seeking shelter, looking out for loved ones and trying to provide basic relief as they were able. AN Managing Editor Amy Goldenberg posted a brief piece that collected links to essays written by North American-based anthropologists for other venues, and there were promises from others to write more substantive articles when more research and reflection was possible. Then, Anthropology News—an official publication of the American Anthropological Association—found a respondent in anthropologist David Beine, Professor of World Missions and Evangelism at Moody Bible Institute.

Beine’s piece “Earthquakes and Culture” appeared on the AN website less than two weeks after the disaster. Beine discussed how certain cultural memes had, if not caused the earthquake, exacerbated the disaster and hampered response efforts. The cultural touchstones Beine pointed to are familiar to those who have visited Nepal – clichés about responses to inaction (ke garne) or claims to community insularity that are part of the oft-touted tropes of Nepal. After the Tohoku triple crisis in Japan, “collectivist culture” was often mentioned as a reason for the vigorous post-disaster mobilization, and a reason to celebrate the Japanese community spirit, but new stereotypes and politics also emerged as the crisis lingered on. In post-quake Haiti, stereotyped “culture of poverty” arguments also circulated. Many of Beine’s stereotypes of Nepal are deployed in negative ways, e.g. pointing to aphno manche (“own people”) as an idea of why aid might be unevenly distributed, rather than as a potentially effective form of networking and community support. He cited important historical phenomena that might complicate rebuilding and resilience after the quake, including Kathmandu’s expanding urban population and the oversized role that international aid has played in the last half century of Nepal’s history. But much was missing: the intricacies of bureaucracy in Nepal, local and national level political turmoil, social and economic inequalities, Nepal’s devastating civil war, issues of privilege and politics in international development, the great diversity of the country and any sense of actual, on-the-ground Nepali efforts in the post-quake period. As a result, his article fell far short of the standards expected of contemporary cultural anthropology, relying more on outdated themes one might find in Kiss, Bow, Shake Hands than in an official AAA publication. The article seemed to blame the victim, noting that the earthquake was exacerbated by “cultural features that have led to unpreparedness.”

In light of the earthquake, I too felt compelled to write quickly but (I hope) with reflection and in areas about which I have research experience to bring attention and knowledge to the global agenda of earthquake relief. When Dr. Beine’s article was shared with me by a graduate student who was aghast at his culturism and objectification, I had hoped that it would be buried online, or overwhelmed by other articles with a more sophisticated view of Nepal, articles that highlighted the diversity of the country and the complexity of response to a disaster of this scale. And for a time it was, but I was naive. Two Nepali anthropologists found the piece and wrote their own response questioning the role of anthropologists in speaking to the field in times of crisis. Gaurab KC and Mallika Shakya, respected scholars and researchers in Nepal, found much to criticize—appropriately so—in Beine’s article. While the authors note that Beine’s article was likely written in haste and that it was intended for a mainly non-Nepali audience, they nonetheless take it as representative of American anthropology. And why not given that it was published by the American Anthropological Association’s official newsletter? We are living in a connected world, one in which scholars from all over the globe can access information and contribute to the scholarly conversation, although not in Anthropology News, as one must be a member of the AAA to post comment on their website.

KC and Shakya’s article concludes with several provocative questions, including asking if “the anthropology on Nepal has kept pace with emerging anthropological movements elsewhere, especially within South Asia and the Global South?” I have long been proud to work in Nepal, and found the anthropological discourse on the Himalayas to be one that seeks to go beyond fetishism, Orientalism, and objectification in asking questions about “virtual Sherpas,” Prisoners of Shangri-la, and “Little America in Kathmandu,” and in thinking reflectively and reflexively about the role of anthropology in Nepal, especially in relation to aid work and cultural exoticization. Yet, as it now stands, the voice of the American Anthropological Association on the earthquake in Nepal suggests that if Nepalis had only been in well-constructed Christian churches, rather than decrepit Hindu temples, maybe fewer would have died on April 25.

All this prompts me to ask a question about editing decisions and peer review in Anthropology News. I write in Savage Minds, not because it is “peer reviewed,” but because I read the work of my peers there. Each year, I send hundreds of dollars to AAA, and yet I learn little of what goes into vetting the articles that are put up in “my name” and which are read by scholars around the world. I fully understand the offense taken by KC and Shakya regarding this article that purports to explain the “culture of Nepal.” There is far more at stake than “good methods and data” in vetting an academic article, but I wonder what editorial vetting was done of “Earthquakes and Culture.” As relief and recovery continue, aid organizations and journalists will still be clamoring for sound bites and quickly digestible “truisms” about Nepal’s culture. The discipline has been through this before, evidenced by guilt/shame culture from Benedict’s remote scholarship for Chrysanthemum and the Sword on to more recent adventures with the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System. Shakya and KC present anthropologists with an important admonition, to think before we write, to be aware of our limitations, and to avoid playing to the stereotyped paradigms in which media and development agencies wish to slot our knowledge. But I hope that they and others will understand that Dr. David Beine does not speak for me, and certainly does not speak for all anthropologists concerned for Nepal.

It is for the living paradox of Nepal that so many of us love this country. The sacred spaces of Kathmandu in the profanity of an overwhelmed, polluted city. The beautiful smiles and namastes of a village within communities for which the government could hardly give a damn.

Yesterday the children of Pokhara returned to school while mass burials and cremations continued in Gorkha, Lamjung, Nuwakot, and elsewhere. This return to normalcy in Nepal’s most scenic city is essential, and yet nothing is in fact normal. Tourists are in short supply and yet the shopowners of Lakeside sit in vacant showrooms, eagerly awaiting their return. Everyday conversations tend towards the mundane again – the price of petrol, the pre-monsoon weather – and yet the specter of disaster looms everywhere – where were you when IT happened?; are you and your family and your home alright?; what about the village?; did you lose anyone? Everywhere there is a big elephant in the room, or better yet, a makara in the shadows.

In driving from Pokhara to Kathmandu yesterday, one could be forgiven for not knowing what had happened. Aside from an utter dearth of vehicles, from Machhapuchhre to Manakamana there is hardly any noticeable damage. There is no roadside carnage. There are no international NGO relief vehicles. There is no Nepal Army response. Nothing of the sort. Other than roadside communities continuing to shelter in tents in what is normally the parking lot of their establishments, and bright orange and blue tents dotting the hillsides across the river, the scene is remarkable placid. But it’s truly nothing of the sort.

Just to the north a mere several kilometers away, the scene is vastly and ghastly different. Here, in the communities of Gorkha, Lamjung, Dading, Nuwakot, and Rasuwa, devastation is an understatement. As Kathryn March lamented, villages are gone. Lives are lost, homes destroyed, infrastructures obliterated. And yet why are the roads so empty? Just a two hour drive from a perfectly functioning airport in Pokhara, on a road that is astonishingly intact (between Pokhara and Kathmandu there is one single sign of a landslide that has been cleared now for the better part of a week, and that’s it), there is virtually no aid being moved. I take that back – there are private jeeps, heavily laden with foam padding, plastic tarps, rice and dal, careening down the highway – but they’re mostly coming from Kathmandu. So where are the big white Toyota Landcruisers so ubiquitous in global crises from Port-au-Prince to Darfur to Kathmandu? Where is this “global response,” the outpouring of hearts, tears, and cash from the international community? What is happening? The hills of Nepal are crying but why aren’t we listening?

Kathmandu was not the epicenter of this earthquake, but it surely is the epicenter of the post-quake. Global media remains fixated on the city. The loss to life within the capital is staggering and upsetting. The loss to the valley’s kingdoms’ ancient architecture is truly immeasurable. The ineptitude of political leaders’ response is infuriating. So I do not mean to suggest that Kathmandu is ok – far from it, actually; this place is messed up! But this is just one part of the picture – and it’s actually the minority. For all the captivating and compelling images in National Geographic and the NYTimes, attention needs to be turned elsewhere. Not in part, as it already has, but in full!

Strangely, when one now returns to Kathmandu from Naubise and the western side of the valley, it’s as if this whole thing happened only in parts. The city is largely intact. From the pass into town down to Kalanki, a building has fallen every kilometer or so, maybe two. Some are ancient enclaves that were stoic yet dilapidated under the best of circumstances; others were new four-story “Western Style” homes, allegedly built earthquake proof but proved egregiously otherwise. Blocks of buildings have not crumbled, as I entirely expected. On the Ring Road going up to Sitapaila, relief teams dig through wreckage, but the wreckage is not that pervasive. The massive statues of Chenrezig and Guru Rinpoche at the foot of Swayambu are not toppled over as people had told me before. Buildings are down with severity at Gongabu, but at Maharajganj and Lazimpat and Baluwatar there is barely a broken wall. It’s weird. And in Thamel and Boudha the tourists wander, smaller in number than normal, but with the usual bewilderment of the Kathmandu phantasmagoria. However, these aren’t your average tourists, wearing as they are International Red Cross vests and EMT polos and Emergency Responder radios. But are they really responding? Why are they here?

The debacle of the Nepali state’s response to this crisis is sadly what many of us anticipated. The incredibly powerful local crowdsourced organization, however, is saving the day. These are the dataminers, mappers, programmers, and communicators who are making a difference! The international relief community has wisely turned to Kathmandu Living Labs to source info and deploy operations. An even greater response, however, is the ultra-grassroots. The Newari motorcycle merchants who load trucks and deliver their own shelter, food, and water to Dhading on Saturday. The American and Nepali responders who have packed trucks, jeeps, and motorcycles and personally carried relief into the hills of Rasuwa and Sindupalchowk. The international teams of crowdsourcers who huddle around laptops and despite their remoteness continue to communicate with those in desperate need. We always want heroes, and thank god we have some! These are the people who are listening to what’s happening in the hills.

Take a good look at a map and a calendar together. Outside of Gorkha and Lamjung, the most heavily affected areas of this earthquake were located in relatively close proximity to Kathmandu – these are the districts mentioned above – Dhading and Nuwakot, Rasuwa and Sindhupalchowk. Like Kathmandu, they are all within the Bagmati Zone, and thus within a day’s drive from the capital And yet we have heard time and again (and again) that the people of these places have received no significant relief. It was only last night that real rescue helicopters turned on their blades – the Chinooks and the Ospreys – nine days after the earthquake occurred! Food and tarps pile up at the Kathmandu airport, and yet communities in Dhulikhel are still sleeping in the open and speak of nothing having reached them. Dhulikhel! – one hour from the city!

We need to do things differently, now and in the future. We know that it’s the rural and the poor that need both urgent and durable support. This has been widely identified by academic experts like Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin as well celebrity designers like Prabal Gurung. And the relief organizations themselves must know this too. But what’s happening? By ignoring those most in need and fixing a gaze on the capital center, we continue to reproduce the very subjectivities of marginality that development programs and relief efforts are ostensibly designed to combat.

Clearly the country and the international community together were really not prepared for this. Some say – how could we be? Well, unfortunately there’s going to be another chance. As Manjushree Thapa so eloquently identified in her social critique in Foreign Policy, this may have been big, but it wasn’t the Big One. And, as such, there will be a Next One. The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado likewise predicts that a quake in the 8.0-8.4 level of magnitude remains possible – an exponentially greater, and scarier, event.

Many lives have been lost, but many have survived. Many lessons have been learned and innovative responses are being created. So we need to put our heads and hearts together and figure out what’s going on here. Differences can and still need to be made. Look to the hills and act! Before it is again too late.