Book Preview: 'Tension' by Dr Nikita Simpson – in conversation

This event marks the first public preview of Tension, published on the very week of the event and a major milestone for CAMHRA’s growing body of ethnographic work on mental health. Through a round‑table conversation followed by a reception, we invite you to join us in celebrating this achievement and engaging with the ideas that shape Dr Nikita Simpson’s book.

About the Book

Tension explores how rapid development in the Western Himalayas affects the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people through the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.”

Tension appears in many forms, including Kamzori, the bodily weakness experienced by elderly women; “future tension,” the accumulating anxieties carried by young girls; and Opara, a form of black magic believed to afflict families.

Drawing on long‑term ethnographic fieldwork, the book traces how Gaddi communities link these states of distress to broader structural transformations, including land dispossession as well as caste, class, tribal and gender inequalities growing alongside modernity and prosperity.

Simpson shows how “tension” becomes an everyday diagnostic tool for understanding the cultural, economic and environmental changes reshaping intimate life. Through this, the book proposes a powerful idea: that inequality is often lived and recognised through who is made to feel, carry and absorb distress.

You can pre-order the book and read the Introduction Chapter on the Duke University Press website: Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas

Roundtable Panellists

• Dr Nikita Simpson (Reader in Anthropology & Co-Director of CAMHRA)
• Professor Veena Das (Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at John Hopkins University)
• Professor Laura Bear (Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics)
• Professor Richard Rechtman (Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry, EHESS, Paris)

Registration

The event is free to attend, but visitor are required to sign up in order to support smooth and timely access to SOAS.

CAMHRA

Further information available on the CAMHRA website.

Image: created with CAMHRA brand kit