Work, Gender, and Generational Change: An ethnography of human-environment relations in a Bahun village, Nepal.

Abstract

In Amdanda, a small Bahun hamlet in the foothills of Gorkha, West Nepal, generational and gendered conflicts over keeping buffalo have arisen. The central argument in this thesis is that work – which is what is at stake in discursive associations with, or a distancing from, buffalo – makes human-environment relations. Through work the tensions and contradictions inherent in village life – of gender, generations, and caste – and their articulation with national and global relations, come into focus. I argue that: 1. Work makes ‘environment’/ place – it is embedded in place; 2. Work makes people – it is disembedded and transformative (through education, migration, development and ‘knowledge’), and; 3. Work is linked to a particular type of nationalism and state-building in Nepal. The ethnographic material on work from Amdanda brings to light the changes that are occurring in both human-environment relations and between generations. Despite the existence of the climate change mitigation REDD-plus program in the area, the modes of being and realities of rural life in Amdanda, suggest other environmental changes (such as migration, new agricultural practices, soil degradation, and ‘development’) are of more immediate concern to villagers and more a cause of future uncertainty than climate change. These changes are intensified by generational change and gendered ways of being that lead to the older generation having a markedly different lived experience and different ideals to that of their children, and as well to men and women spending their days and thinking about their lives differently. This is best highlighted in a family conflict over keeping buffalo. The fundamental contradiction examined in this thesis is that women are at the heart of all levels of social production, yet they are systematically devalued in their own culture and by development. Village relationships with buffalo, therefore, have particular meaning for the way groups of people relate to each other, to development and to the environment. They also reveal key relationships and practices that demonstrate a society on the cusp of gendered, generational and environmental change, and therefore, future uncertainty and potential crisis.