Anna Beardsley

October 14th, 2015

ANTH 480
Thesis Proposal
Sherpas have become providers of the tourist experience. They have created working
relationships that try to foster cultural exchanges and share a common space rather than one
group taking over another. However, there are also challenges that tourism provokes. Sherpas
have had to adapt to a large stream of tourists over the years and are forced to deal with the
impacts of globalization. It seems as if Sherpas have become dependent on adventure tourism as
a source of survival. I begin to wonder if their culture is looked at more as a commodity rather
than a lifestyle or a culture holding intrinsic meaning. There is concern for the host community
that their services and even success will be considered insignificant to the tourists. The
environmental, cultural, and economic impacts of tourism test the communitys engagement in
the development of their involvement and their cultural traditions. By looking more closely at
cultural relations and adventure tourism, we can better understand cultural diversity and the
impacts of mountaineering.
Sherpas are members of an ethnic group who live in the surroundings of Mount Everest
and some other high Himalayan peaks. They have provided climbing support for Himalayan
mountaineering expeditions since the first decade of the twentieth century. They are usually quiet
partners to the international mountaineers, carrying supplies, establishing routes, fixing ropes,
cooking, setting up camps, sometimes saving the lives of climbers and sometimes dying
themselves in the process (Ortner 118). The Sherpas have made major contributions to

Himalayan mountaineering. They have made money, become famous and often died while doing
it. However, mountaineering was originally and is still defined by the international mountaineers.
Therefore, the perspective of the Sherpas is essential to understand their gains over the course of
the twentieth century.
Within the past forty years, the Mount Everest region has become one of the foremost
centers of Himalayan trekking and mountaineering tourism. Tourism has brought new
opportunities for the Sherpas who inhabit the area, and many have become affluent through work
in the tourist trade and the operation of tourist lodges and other businesses. Economic
development has been accompanied by increasing economic differentiation and by a number of
changes in local lifestyles as well as by cross-cultural conflicts between tourists and Sherpas.
Yet, there has also been considerable cross-cultural continuity. Sherpas are deliberately
maintaining their fundamental values, beliefs, subsistence practices and aspects of their lifestyle
(Fisher 55). However, economic differentiation and out migration pose long-term social
challenges.
Travel and tourism have become one of the largest industrial complexes and items of
consumption in modern Western economies. Tourism is an important avenue towards capitalist
accumulation. Tourism helps us to recognize how the social meaning and materiality of space
and place is created, and how these representations of place are explicitly incorporated into the
accumulation process. There is a need to look more closely at theoretical approaches that
recognize how tourism acts as a capital, organized activity that is driven by the inherent and
defining social dynamics of that systems social and ideological relations. (Stevens 410)
Understanding the Sherpas cultural and historical background will help to shape their
involvement with mountaineering and international travelers. Author Stanley Stevens article

Claiming the High Ground: Sherpas, Subsistence, and Environmental Change in the Highest
Himalaya looks closely at the Sherpas relationship to their environment and how it helps to
construct their culture. Sherpa is a distinct language. Sherpas have their own local gods, spirits
of places, clan gods, and regional gods (Stevens 32). Sherpas have utilized the environment
around them to worship their gods and practice their own faith. Through changes in their
environment because of Mt. Everest tourism, they somehow have to find the space to coexist.
Also by looking carefully at works by such as Sherry Ortners book Life and Death on
Mt. Everest, context and personal accounts of the Sherpas can be found in her direst fieldwork
observation and notes. She states, Well while mountaineering has had an impact on the Sherpas,
it has also provided them with ways to transform and remake their own society at least partly in
terms of their own agenda (Ortner 5). Through this article a close examination of Sherpas
history will be helpful to track how they got to where they are now. Being able to start at the
beginning will help me compare their existence and practices today.
Looking at P.M Goddes article Tourism and Development on Mountain Regions we can
understand how, communities generally have experienced relatively slower rates of cultural
change than their counterparts in lowland regional though rates have accelerated in recent years
due to accessibility and global markets (Gode 4-5). By looking at this article I hope to see how
globalization has even the Sherpas profit and sustainability but also how it might change their
way of life in order to accommodate climbers.
Looking closely at a more anthropological source, Robert J. Gordons book Tarzan was
an Eco-Tourist frameworks surrounding teamwork, community and solidarity will show how
mountaineering is at times a selfish event. Gordon states that, these ideas suggest one should
use the team or larger group for ones own advancement (Gordon 19) enabling more ideas

towards group collectiveness and the lack of solidarity found in the sport. Theory will give a
better understanding surrounding climbers perspective on group involvement vs. selffulfillment. I hope to also draw perspectives of how mountaineers view the Sherpas.
The last section of research will look more closely at personal accounts and reasons for
climbing Mt. Everest. By looking at books such as Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air. He reflects on
his experiences climbing the mountain during the 1996 storm, he states, everestEverest has
always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky
hold on reality, (Krakauer 127) highlighting different motives for climbing. Knowing that the
author was working for Outside magazine while climbing the mountain perhaps I will also be
able to draw on perspectives of commercialization and how members of the group he was a part
of wanted to climb the mountain just because it was there. Looking at mountaineers motives
will help to highlight the tourism industry and the need for adventure.
For data collection I hope to draw from specific case studies of the Sherpas through
Ortners fieldwork and data. I think that it would be interesting to highlight specific accounts and
experiences that they have shared in her research. I would potentially include their reflections to
help give the reader more context when thinking about their involvement in the mountaineering
world. I would also like to be able to trace the history of Sherpa culture through detailed
artifacts. By doing this I hope to show the effects of globalization and capitalism on Sherpa
culture over the past twenty years. Through the influence of tourism, Sherpas are looked at more
as commodities. Drawing on articles looking at the commodification of land and people, I hope
to establish an even stronger framework and discourse surrounding anthropological theories of
these ideas.

During the month of October I hope to narrow down my research topic even more. I hope
to read relevant literature about the history of Mt Everest, the Sherpas, adventure tourism and
commodification. Each week I plan on reading one to two new sources or continue reading a
source from the previous week. By the month of November, I will have a concrete research
question and argument. I will continue to look at sources but at this point I will have a much
better idea as to what the main focus of my paper will be. During this time I also hope to look at
films that discuss Mt. Everest and the events that have taken place on the mountain. During
December-February, I hope to start writing my thesis draft. I plan on writing one to two pages a
day so that I am not overwhelmed or stressed when spring semester starts. I hope that by the
middle of February I will have close to 20-25 pages of my draft done. By this point I will
continue to add to the draft but will also leave an adequate amount of time to go back and do
revisions.

Bibliography
Coburn, Broughton. Everest: Mountain without Mercy. Washington, DC: National Geographic
Society, 1997. Print.
Fisher, James F. Sherpas Reflections on Change in Himalayan Nepal. Berkeley: U of California,
1. Print.
Godde, P., Price, Martin F., and Zimmerman, F. M.. Tourism and Development in Mountain

Regions. Wallingford, Oxon, GBR: CABI Publishing, 2000. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 13
October 2015.
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster. Villard, 1997.
Print.
Ortner, Sherry B. Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999. Print.
Stevens, Stanley F. Claiming The High Ground : Sherpas, Subsistence, And Environmental
Change In The Highest Himalaya. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.eBook
Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
Stevens, Stanley F. "Tourism, Change and Continuity in the Mount Everest Region, Nepal."
Geographical Review 83.4 (1993): 410-27. Print.
Vivanco, Luis A., and Robert J. Gordon. Tarzan Was an Eco-tourist--: And Other Tales in the
Anthropology of Adventure. Berghahn, 2006. Print.
Whittaker, Jon. A Life on the Edge: Memories from Everest and Beyong. 1st ed. Seattle, 1999.
Print.