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Page 4
“...man’s parents are evicted from his uncle’s
land where they’ve been living for seventeen years so that
the uncle can rebuild a house for his nuclear family. In the
third story, a teenage daughter decides to move into her
uncle’s house rather than into a shelter with her mid-
dle-aged mother, thus leaving her mother scrambling
to find financial capital in order to rebuild and reunite
her family.
I have selected these three stories for the way they draw
attention to how household members manage kin social-
ity and finance through the careful management of time,
and how the earthquake has interrupted this process.
I revisit Meyer Fortes’ theorizations of amity, time and
household development to argue that household recon-
struction should be seen as a moral project, an attempt to
actualize the virtues of kinship by engaging with economic
systems. My research was based in Kathmandu and a town
in Rasuwa with close economic ties to the capital - both
places where these household economic systems are...”
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Page 5
“...reimagining of households as a temporal process, what
he described as the developmental cycle of the domestic
group (Fortes 1958). In most Nepali ethnic groups, includ-
ing the Newars and Tamangs, this process follows the basic
customs of patrilineal and patrilocal joint family structure,
wherein brothers bring their wives to live with them in
their parents’ house, and where the family estate is usually
divided after the eldest generation dies. Importantly, this
process does not exist within a social vacuum. Rather, it
incorporates a variety of factors and events outside of
what is generally thought of as the household’s physical
interior. In urban areas, such as Kathmandu, and even in
the town in Rasuwa I frequented, these other factors can
include tuition fees for private or public schools, land
purchases within a chaotic market, loan payments, hosting
regular feasts for extended kin, and remittances sent from
family members working abroad. All these events work
along regular or semi-regular...”
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Page 6
“...own pocket could be seen as a clear sign of family discord.
Yet despite this sign, Sanjay’s brother’s separation was
ambiguous. His decision to come home for ritual occasions,
including ‘mha puja— an annual ritual that often doubles
as a declaration of household membership (Sakya 2000:
82-88)—indicated that he was not fully separated from his
parents’ house. Likewise, Sanjay’s family’s ‘guthi’—an asso-
ciation for social and religious functions in Newar society
that bring together elements of kin, caste and territory,
and is one of the principle institutions for Newar social
organization (Gellner 1992, 231-250)—had not registered
any separation. In fact, Sanjay’s brother seemed in no rush
to correct this fact, participating with his elder brother
and father in guthi feasts and rituals as part of the same
household. Given these ambiguities, it was unclear what
68 HIMALAYA Fall2017...”
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Page 10
“...earning NRs 5-6,000 a month, while
her husband did not seem to contribute any financial help
to her household. Several years before the earthquake she
had a job working as a seamstress for a local cooperative,
but had to quit that job when her mother became sick with
cancer. Her mother died before the earthquake, by which
point Sapana’s finances were depleted. Now she had only
NRs 5,000 in an account at a cooperative. Her daughter had
a volunteer job at an NGO dedicated to women’s economic
and social empowerment, volunteering as a teacher in
rural areas south of the city. The daughter was given a
stipend of NRs 8,000 each year, though more importantly
the NGO had promised to cover her expenses should she
decided to study in North America. However, Sapana was
unable to cover the remaining expenses, and so her daugh-
ter was not able to take advantage of this opportunity.
By Sapana’s own calculation, reconstruction would cost
her over NRs 2,500,000—far more than she could afford.
Even though...”
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Page 12
“...locals argue that there is really no
substantive difference.
References
Desjarlais, Robert. 2003. Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths
Among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
------. 2016. Subject to Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist
World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Fortes, Meyer. 1958. Introduction. In The Developmental
Cycle in Domestic Groups, edited by Meyer Fortes, 1-14.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
------. 1969. Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis
Henry Morgan. Oxford: Routledge.
Fricke, Tom. 1994. Himalayan Households. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Gellner, 1992. David. Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest:
Newar Buddhhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Holmberg, David. 1989. Order in Paradox: My th, Ritual,
and Exchange among Nepal’s Tamang. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Kunreuther, Laura. 2014. Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy
and Mediation in Kathmandu. Berkeley:...”
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