Mark Liechty's article The Carnal Economies: The Commodification of Food and Sex in Katmandu, Nepal focuses on commercialization that characterize the recent development of prostitution and public eating in Kathmandu. Based on field research, Liechty’s argues that class has increasingly come to be the framing paradigm for many urban people in Kathmandu, encompassing (though by no means eliminating) the social valence of caste. This new urban middle-class has emerged based on Kathmandu culture shift in commensality, as transactions in food and sex. Commensality and endogamy, food and sex have gone a long way in determining the boundaries and purity of caste between groups. As well, recent rise of public meat, and alcohol consumption and sexual services by patrons in Kathmandu have solidified and confirmed male authority in the new market-driven class culture. This response paper will look at how food and sex have played important roles in displacing caste to class relations, the emerging new middle class, the rise of public eating in Katmandu, and gender division.
Liechty is a cultur...
In an article entitled, Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga 's The White Tiger, author Ana Cristina Mendes describes the many attributes of the poor proletariat class of India. Mendes shows how “dark India,”
In Nehru’s India, women were victims of a “passive revolution” that subtly advanced bourgeoisie men of higher castes under a guise of parliamentary democracy. Though women have presided over the Indian National Congress, served as a prime minister, and represent a large part of India’s la...
...onstrate the nature of the Kathmandu people to always want to remain “in”. Each section has an underlying theme of globalization and the aspiration for connectivity to western ideologies. The most significant and interesting aspects of these readings was the importance consumption has on the well-being of the citizens of Kathmandu. Consumption has to help the economy, but I found it very interesting that Mark Liechty only chose to focus on the deep rooted necessity to stand out but also belong. These readings fail to address in detail how the consumption of the middle class affects the lower and higher groups. I found myself asking; what about the lower and higher classes? The overarching theme threaded together by these chapters is displaying the important role consumption, in relation to social and economic standing, means to the middle-class people of Kathmandu.
Social reproduction is the reproduction of cultural, human, and social capital in society. Therefore languages, traditions, cultural values, education, food security, and social circles are passed down from one generation to the next through Karl Mannheim’s concept of “fresh contact” and through society as a whole. Social reproduction is effective when social structures and equality within society are maintained. Inequality, poverty, and social changes that force society to adapt can impede the process of social reproduction causing what is known as a “crisis in social reproduction” (Wells, 2009). Born into Brothels demonstrates a crisis of social reproduction that negatively impacts the lives of children living in Sonagachi as a result of globalization, neoliberal policies, poverty, lack of adequate education and social structures to pass down capital, and the stigma of prostitution. Additionally, it shows the need for children to make economic contributions to their families that prevent them from leaving the brothel.
South Asian women engage in patriarchal values and normative structure established more than two thousands years ago, continue to be oppressed by a dominant group of men. These women suffer further oppression through the strict adherence to cultural garb. Still today, media and educational system portray South Asian women as self-sacrificing, faithful to the family, and submissive to men.
Indian society was patriarchal, centered on villages and extended families dominated by males (Connections, Pg. 4). The villages, in which most people lived, were admini...
For my fiction research I chose to do Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi to study the differences in gender roles as well as government politics. The main purpose of this fiction is to gain a better understanding of how Satrapi’s style of writing reflects the inequality that arose during the Islamic Revolution through graphic narrative. In contrast to my ethnography, Women will keep the household by Esara Pilapa; the main purpose of her study is to comprehend the transition of Thailand women from migrant daughters to migrant householders and how marriage tensions arise from changes in gender roles. While both the fiction and ethnography focus on two different countries, they both explore the inequalities in gender roles. However, whereas Persepolis illustrates Satrapi’s protest against gender roles and cultural inequalities under the Islamic Revolution through imagery, Women will keep the household demonstrates how the transition to marriage impacts decision making and gender role positions through interviews.
Keyes, Charles F. Karma, An Anthropological Inquiry. Los Angeles, CA, USA: University of California Press, 1983
Rajib, Shagun, Shireen. “Women’s Empowerment and Forced Sex within Marriage in Rural India”. Economic & Political Weekly, 14 January 2012.
Owing to India’s diversity, these identities are determined by caste, ancestry, socioeconomic class, religion, sexual orientation and geographic location, and play an important role in determining the social position of an individual (Anne, Callahan & Kang, 2011). Within this diversity, certain identities are privileged over others, due to social hierarchies and inequalities, whose roots are more than a thousand years old. These inequalities have marginalized groups and communities which is evident from their meagre participation in politics, access to health and education services and
From beginning to end, the novel, “The God of Small Things”, authored by Arundhati Roy, makes you very aware of a class system (caste) that separates people of India in many ways. This separation among each other is surprisingly so indoctrinated in everyone that many who are even disadvantaged by this way of thinking uphold its traditions, perhaps for fear of losing even more than they already have, or simply because they do not know any other way. What’s worse, people seen as the lowest of the low in a caste system are literally called “untouchable”, as described in Roy’s novel, allowing, according to Human Rights Watch:
India can be considered a masculine society. This is evident visually in the display of success and power, which is best observed in the flaunting of wealth. It is common for one to advertise their success. However as previously mentioned Indian culture is heavily influe...
Nanda, S. (1998). Arranging a Marriage in India. In P. DeVita (Ed.), Stumbling toward truth: Anthropologists at work (pp. 196-204). Illinois, U.S: Waveland Press.
Susan Bayly. (1999). Caste, Society and Politics in India: from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press
Bhutan is a small country located in the Himalayas. It does have a richly scenic land though. There are broad, grassy valleys; forested mountain ranges, and heavily wooded jungle areas. There are three geographic regions in which the country is divided. Northern Bhutan lies in the Great Himalayas where the mountains reach as high as 24,000 ft. and the weather is cold. Central Bhutan is in the middle of the Himalayan region where there are several fertile valleys. The Duars plain, along the southern border of Bhutan is a hot, humid, and rainy area. This jungle region is filled with malaria infested swamps. (Karan, 224)