Untouchable Wealth: The Moral Exchange of New Wealth among Women in an Urban Nepali Untouchable-Caste Community

Title

Untouchable Wealth: The Moral Exchange of New Wealth among Women in an Urban Nepali Untouchable-Caste Community

Project Year

2011

Region

South Asia

Country

Nepal

Project Description

This is a study of the moral communities and practices generated around the use of 'new wealth' in an untouchable caste neighborhood in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. There are both a historical and contemporary social components to the study. I am interested in how the terms of caste, class, and gender inform, and have been affected by, the way local economies of value have intersected with economic liberalization policies and practices since the mid-twentieth century. Economic liberalization has made its mark in two broad categories. On the one hand, broader access to consumer products and practices; on the other hand, the proliferation of development programs and practices in view of Nepal's status as a "least developed country." How does a moral economy of pleasure interact with the political and social exigencies of a moral economy of need? How do these encounters with global modernity adjust and how are they in turn adjusted by alternative logics of economic rationality? I ask these questions in terms of how access to markedly new wealth are placed in exchange and circulation by women in an untouchable caste neighborhood through their initiation and participation in a series of formal and informal, self-initiated and introduced credit and savings programs. What are the social and moral preconceptions about caste, class, and gender that underwrite the availability and use of certain credit and savings options? How do ideas about social, ethical and economic community, risk, and trust inform and become effective of these transactions? What types of consumer practices and desires do these exchanges give rise to?

Researcher(s)

Sepideh Bajracharya

About the Researcher(s)

Sepideh Bajracharya received her PhD from Harvard in Social Anthropology. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher with the Michigan Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor, Socio-cultural Anthropology.

Citation

“Untouchable Wealth: The Moral Exchange of New Wealth among Women in an Urban Nepali Untouchable-Caste Community,” Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) Research Projects, accessed March 29, 2024, https://imtfiresearch.omeka.net/items/show/6530.

Output Formats