‘We are in the process’: The exploitation of hope and the political economy of waiting among the aspiring irregular migrants in Nepal
September 2020
|
Journal article
|
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
‘We are in the process’ was the phrase used by my Nepali interlocutors, soon-to-be migrants, who were waiting for their departure abroad for months on end. Based on conversations with irregular migrants, this paper explores the relationship between time and power, focusing on the political economy of waiting. It suggests that making people wait has become a key technique of governmentality used by the migration industry actors to control aspiring migrants’ movement, exploit their desires and hopes, and extract surplus value, turning the migration industry in Nepal into a major system of profiteering. Forcing aspiring migrants to wait in a state of suspense (not boredom) for departures that are imminent but not certain, unscrupulous brokers create an affective state in suspended subjects, which allows those in power to prey on migrants’ vulnerability and their hope for a better life, pushing many of the aspiring migrants into grave debt.
Hoffmann, Michael. The partial revolution: labour, social movements and the invisible handof Mao in Western Nepal. 214 pp., maps, illus.,bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. £85.00 (cloth)
May 2020
|
Journal article
|
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
FFR
Money and blood: remittances as a substance of relatedness in transnational families in Nepal
October 2019
|
Journal article
|
American Anthropologist
FFR
Gender, marriage, and the dynamic of (im)mobility in the mid-Western hills of Nepal
May 2019
|
Journal article
|
Mobilities
This paper explores the relationship between gender, marriage, and (im)mobility in rural hilly areas of mid-Western Nepal, showing how (1) the mobility of men is predicated on the ‘immobility’ of women, with marriage being key to the gendered dynamic of (im)mobility, (2) how the construction of hegemonic masculinity, exemplified by a figure of a successful international migrant, is inseparable from an ideal of femininity vested in the figure of a virtuous domesticated housewife. Examining different scales of mobility, the paper cautions against posing a rigid dichotomy between ‘mobile men’ and ‘immobile’ women, illustrating that the ‘left behind’ wives experience an impressive degree of everyday mobility in contrast to their internationally mobile husbands.
FFR
Maoist people's war and the revolution of everyday life in Nepal
March 2019
|
Book
This book is an ethnography of social change and norm-remaking brought about by the Maoist People’s War in Nepal between 1996 and 2006. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with people in the former Maoist heartland, including both committed Maoist revolutionaries and ‘reluctant rebels’, it explores how a remote Himalayan village was forged as the centre of the Maoist rebellion, how its inhabitants coped with the situation of war, how they came to embrace the Maoist project and maintain ordinary life during war. Contrary to the dominant narrative, even in the Maoist capital, hailed as a village of resistance, a lot of ordinary people were only ‘reluctant rebels’ who supported the Maoists because of kinship ties, moral solidarity, and compliance with the Maoist regime of governance. By focusing on the relational side of the Maoist movement – kinship ties between ordinary villagers and guerrillas, fraternal and affective bonds within the Maoist movement – the book explores the social processes and relationships through which the People’s War became possible.
The book illuminates how the everyday became a primary site of revolution in Nepal: of crafting new subjectivities, normalizing previously transgressive norms, such as beef-eating and inter-caste commensality, and reconfiguring the ways people act in and think about the world. Revolution in Nepal came about not as a result of war, but rather in the process of war, with the praxis of revolutionary modes of sociality and ‘embodied change’ being key to transforming people’s practical consciousness. Rather than being simply an outcome of the Maoist policies or ideas, much of the change was a result of embodied experiences of radically new ways of relating across caste, class and gender divides. By having recreated their everyday practice—often as part of the exceptional times of war and rules that apply in times of crisis—people in the Maoist base area transformed not only their values, but also the rigid social hierarchies structuring Nepali society.
Nepal, Maoist People's War, Anthropology of War, Revolutionary Movements, Social Change, Maoist Movements, Youth and Conflict, Habitus, Practice Theory, Embodied Change, Caste, Revolutionary Politics, Revolutionary Mobilization, Revolution
‘Rules that apply in times of crisis’: time, agency, and norm‐remaking during Nepal's People's War
December 2017
|
Journal article
|
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
4301 Archaeology, 4401 Anthropology, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 44 Human Society
"I started working because I was hungry": The consequences of food insecurity for children's well-being in rural Ethiopia
April 2017
|
Journal article
|
Social Science and Medicine
Food insecurity, the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of safe, nutritious food, is a persistent problem in rural Ethiopia. However, little qualitative research has explored how food insecurity affects children over time, from their point of view. What are the effects of economic 'shocks' such as illness, death, loss of livestock, drought and inflation on availability of food, and children's well-being? To what extent do social protection schemes (in this case, the Productive Safety Net Programme) mitigate the long-term effects of food insecurity for children? The paper uses a life-course approach, drawing on analysis of four rounds of qualitative longitudinal research conducted in 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2014, with eight case study children, as part of Young Lives, an ongoing cohort study. Children's descriptions of the importance of food and a varied diet (dietary diversity) in everyday life were expressed in a range of qualitative methods, including interviews, group discussions and creative methods. The paper suggests that while the overall picture of food security in Ethiopia has improved in the past decade, for the poorest rural families, food insecurity remains a major factor influencing decisions about a range of matters - children's time allocation, whether to continue in school, whether to migrate for work, and whether they marry. The paper argues that experiences of food insecurity need to be understood holistically, in relation to other aspects of children's lives, at differing stages of the life-course during childhood. The paper concludes that nutritional support beyond early childhood needs to be a focus of policy and programming.
food insecurity, children and young people, qualitative longitudinal research, rural Ethiopia
'When Gods return to their homeland in the Himalayas': Maoism, religion, and change in the model village of Thabang, mid-western Nepal
November 2016
|
Chapter
|
Religion, Secularism, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal
Based on ethnographic research in the former Maoist base area of Nepal, this chapter explores the impact of the People’s War and Maoist ideology on religious beliefs and practices in Nepal. Drawing on the parable of the ‘flight of Gods’ and on the life history of one of the village elders, the chapter explores the gradual demise of Hinduism as a dominant mode of religious practice and weaves together key themes for understanding religious change engendered by the conflict -- de-sacralisation of once sacred spaces and once sacred polity, transgression of the boundaries between purity and pollution, increasing privatisation of religious practices, and creation of the vacuum in transcendent authority which in many cases is filled by new religious or quasi-religious movements, such as Christianity and Maoism itself.
people's war, Nepal, christianity in South Asia, SBTMR, secularism in South Asia, Maoism, religious change
Davis, Coralynn V. 2014. Maithil women's tales: storytelling on the Nepal–India border. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 222 pp. Hb.: US$57. ISBN: 978‐0‐252‐03842‐6.
November 2016
|
Journal article
|
Social Anthropology
4404 Development Studies, 44 Human Society
Balancing school and work with new opportunities: Changes in children's gendered time use in Ethiopia (2006-2013)
September 2016
|
Other
|
Balancing school and work with new opportunities: Changes in children's gendered time use in Ethiopia (2006-2013)
Focusing on the relationship between children’s work and school attendance, this paper explores time use trends among boys and girls in Ethiopia. It does this by comparing the time use of two cohorts of children at the same age, 12 years, but interviewed at two different points in time, 2006 and 2013. In assessing the pattern over this period we have taken four contributory factors into account; gendered norms and aspirations for children’s futures; local opportunities for both schooling and work; the characteristics of schools and different kinds of work; and intra-household dynamics. Broad trends are identified through survey data and case studies of two rural communities that have experienced rapid economic and social transformation, with associated increases in gendered opportunities for work. We find that overall there is a small reduction in the hours worked by 12-year-olds over the seven years. However, this trend is mainly in urban areas. Rural boys are found to have increased their working hours. By examining two case-study communities that have experienced increasing economic development and gendered work opportunities we find that, contrary to expectations, the increased returns to work have lowered boys’ education aspirations and increased their school drop-out rates relative to girls’.
time use, gender, Ethiopia, SBTMR
Gendered trajectories through school, work and marriage in Vietnam
August 2016
|
Other
|
Gendered trajectories through school, work and marriage in Vietnam
This paper discusses the school, work and marriage trajectories of young people in Vietnam, using analysis of Young Lives longitudinal qualitative data gathered from 16 children and their parents between 2007 and 2014 as well as descriptive survey statistics. One of the main findings is that gender is not always a key driver of children’s divergent schooling, working and marriage trajectories. Instead, intersectionality of socio-economic status, locality and ethnicity play a more important role, with locality and ethnicity associated with the widest gaps in school, work and marriage trajectories. Gender gaps in Vietnam do not appear to open up until mid- to late adolescence, close to upper secondary school age, with girls more likely to continue their education at a higher level. However, girls’ slight advantage in education does not necessarily translate into an advantage in the labour market, since boys have access to more prestigious and better-paid jobs. The findings indicate that gender gaps evolve over the life course and are shaped by socio-economic status, ethnicity and locality, as well as by social norms, which have a particularly strong bearing on gender relations as girls and boys come of age and as they start families. This points towards the centrality of longitudinal research and the life-course approach for understanding the gendered nature of young people’s pathways (and by implication, the importance of tracking children through into adulthood).
SBTMR, gender trajectories, Vietnam
De-mythologizing 'the Village of Resistance': How rebellious were the peasants in the Maoist base area of Nepal?
September 2015
|
Journal article
|
Dialectical Anthropology
It has become something of a cliché to speak about Nepal’s districts of Rolpa and Rukum as the heartland of the Maoist base area, where the Maoist Movement enjoyed most popular support during the People’s War of 1996–2006. The Kham Magar village of Thabang, known as the capital of the base area, has been furthermore hailed as a ‘village of resistance,’ and its inhabitants are often portrayed as rebellious peasants who resisted the state since at least the 1950s. Based on the analysis of ordinary peasants’ narratives from Thabang, the paper will argue that this reading of Thabang’s history, which privileges resistance, does not give due to the complexity of power relations within the village, to inequalities between the village notables and ordinary people, and to the view of peasants themselves. Furthermore, it will be argued that Thabang—one of the most extensively researched villages in Nepal due to its ‘revolutionary history’—represents an interesting case study of how the project of writing history from the margins can, in fact, obscure the mere voices of those, it claims to represent.
resistance, civil war, Nepal, subaltern, peasant agency, guerrilla enclave, Maoist movement
Reluctant shamans: on the limits of human agency and the power of partible souls among the Kham Magars of Nepal
Journal article
|
Encounters with the Invisible: Revisiting Spirit Possession in the Himalayas