No description available.

Despite the fact that conservation ideology has led conservation practice over the last quarter of a century, the removal of local residents from protected areas in the name of biological preservation remains the most common strategy in developing countries. Its wide-ranging impacts on displaced societies have rarely been properly addressed, particularly in regard to the establishment of parks. This thesis is based on 15 months fieldwork carried out among a group of displaced park residents known as Rana Tharus in the country of Nepal. They have long lived in Royal Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve in the far-western part of that nation. This thesis is largely inspired by recent academic advocacy that conservation-induced dislocations on rural communities are having a serious influence on policy implementation. Such advocacy is leading to more effective and pragmatic park policies. West, Igoe and Brockington (2006) point out that park residents are an indispensable part of protected areas and their cultural and economic interactions with parks occur in diverse ways. Without a full understanding of these interrelationships, any kind of forced conservation policies will be doomed to fail and cause severe disturbances to people’s lives. Like most protected areas in developing countries, this thesis shows that the unplanned resettlement scheme of Shulkaphanta failed to mitigate the socio-economic losses that Rana Tharus experienced due to their displacement. The ethnographic data notes that when attention is paid solely to the economic losses experienced by Rana Tharus, the social costs such as social exclusion, loss of culture, and psychological depression are rarely addressed in the dislocation program. An inadequate understanding of the links between protected areas and local livelihoods is one of the major causes for the continuation of park-people conflicts including Shuklaphanta. In this thesis, I demonstrate how the displacement and other social changes have gradually diminished the social and economic livelihoods of the Rana people. I argue that many of these social impacts were unexpected because Rana Tharus actively responded to all these changes by putting new social relations into effect. As a result, significant social transformations have occurred in contemporary Rana Tharu society. The undivided household unit was no longer their first preference when the new economic realities made themselves felt, and gender and patrilineal kin relationships became more tense. The traditional labouring system (Kamaiya) that existed between wealthy and poor Rana Tharus declined due to increasing poverty. All these had erased their ability to maintain sustainable livelihoods that they had previously enjoyed. Moreover, substantial loss of landownership had made it impossible for Rana Tharus to share equal social, economic and political status with the new migrants - the twice-born Pahaaris. These accumulated and unforseen results of conservation practices can only be well understood if a holistic analytical perspective is adopted. This thesis borrows the concept of sustainable household livelihood system and the social theories of practice, power and agency to explore the dynamic relationships between conservation, local livelihoods and culture. The stories told by the Rana Tharu provide some important lessons. I argue that dislocation programs should be put aside or at least closely reviewed if their hidden social impacts are not well understood or at least lead to some form of compensation. Such action may prevent the further expansion of park-people conflicts which are shown to hinder conservation efforts of Shuklaphanta and local sustainable livelihoods. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1369652 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

Despite the fact that conservation ideology has led conservation practice over the last quarter of a century, the removal of local residents from protected areas in the name of biological preservation remains the most common strategy in developing countries. Its wide-ranging impacts on displaced societies have rarely been properly addressed, particularly in regard to the establishment of parks. This thesis is based on 15 months fieldwork carried out among a group of displaced park residents known as Rana Tharus in the country of Nepal. They have long lived in Royal Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve in the far-western part of that nation. This thesis is largely inspired by recent academic advocacy that conservation-induced dislocations on rural communities are having a serious influence on policy implementation. Such advocacy is leading to more effective and pragmatic park policies. West, Igoe and Brockington (2006) point out that park residents are an indispensable part of protected areas and their cultural and economic interactions with parks occur in diverse ways. Without a full understanding of these interrelationships, any kind of forced conservation policies will be doomed to fail and cause severe disturbances to people’s lives. Like most protected areas in developing countries, this thesis shows that the unplanned resettlement scheme of Shulkaphanta failed to mitigate the socio-economic losses that Rana Tharus experienced due to their displacement. The ethnographic data notes that when attention is paid solely to the economic losses experienced by Rana Tharus, the social costs such as social exclusion, loss of culture, and psychological depression are rarely addressed in the dislocation program. An inadequate understanding of the links between protected areas and local livelihoods is one of the major causes for the continuation of park-people conflicts including Shuklaphanta. In this thesis, I demonstrate how the displacement and other social changes have gradually diminished the social and economic livelihoods of the Rana people. I argue that many of these social impacts were unexpected because Rana Tharus actively responded to all these changes by putting new social relations into effect. As a result, significant social transformations have occurred in contemporary Rana Tharu society. The undivided household unit was no longer their first preference when the new economic realities made themselves felt, and gender and patrilineal kin relationships became more tense. The traditional labouring system (Kamaiya) that existed between wealthy and poor Rana Tharus declined due to increasing poverty. All these had erased their ability to maintain sustainable livelihoods that they had previously enjoyed. Moreover, substantial loss of landownership had made it impossible for Rana Tharus to share equal social, economic and political status with the new migrants - the twice-born Pahaaris. These accumulated and unforseen results of conservation practices can only be well understood if a holistic analytical perspective is adopted. This thesis borrows the concept of sustainable household livelihood system and the social theories of practice, power and agency to explore the dynamic relationships between conservation, local livelihoods and culture. The stories told by the Rana Tharu provide some important lessons. I argue that dislocation programs should be put aside or at least closely reviewed if their hidden social impacts are not well understood or at least lead to some form of compensation. Such action may prevent the further expansion of park-people conflicts which are shown to hinder conservation efforts of Shuklaphanta and local sustainable livelihoods. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1369652 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

Participatory methods have been deployed in different ways by actors in pursuit of a diverse range of personal, organisational and development objectives. With the rise of globalisation, neoliberalism and new aid delivery systems, so these methods have been adapted, re-branded and deployed to serve the objectives of a new range of actors. From these macro level currents come micro level initiatives which enrol the global poor in new projects of development. Most recently, the Millennium Development Goals have focused the agenda of participatory development on new models of public service delivery. With this new imperative comes an emergent focus on governance as a determinant of improved service provision. The same influential actors that have taken a lead role in redefining the problem have also offered new solutions. Just as many populations in the Global North have historically taken a role in the production of services that are responsive to their needs, so it is proposed that others in the Global South can be supported to claim similar rights, demand similar accountability. This thesis explores the increasingly popular technology of voice and accountability as a solution to inequalities in access to health services. I explore the extent to which the model is constitutive of a broader neoliberal discourse which is coproduced by a range of actors from Washington to village. Using a case study from a maternal health programme in Nepal; I discuss the implications of this social technology, with reference to the range of personal and organisational projects of which it is constitutive. I discuss how these discourses shape the way development is performed, and reflexively reproduce diverse regimes of power. I examine what is produced by such initiatives, and, the ways in which actors gain from this globalised project, or are disenfranchised in new ways.

Thirty households were randomly selected to examine intra-household gender differentials in work roles and distribution of resources, between adult men and women, and boys and girls. Work related activities were assessed by time used in agricultural work, household work, and income generating work. Distribution of resources was assessed by expenses on clothing, education, and medical care. A significant difference was found in the amount of time spent in agricultural work by men and women, with women contributing more. Women were also found to contribute significantly more time in household work. In income generating activities, men were found to spend significantly more time than women. However, in the total time spent in work related activities, women spent significantly more time than men. The difference in the amount of money spent on clothing for men and women was found to be significant, with men receiving the larger share. The difference in medical care expenses between men and women was not significant. However, directional difference showed that women received less. Although, no meaningful analyses of children could be performed because of sample restrictions, the regression results showed women contributed significantly more than men, and girls contributed significantly more than boys in agricultural work. Similarly, women and girls contributed significantly more time than men and boys in the household work. The regression results also showed that men and boys received significantly more money for clothing than women and girls, and boys received significantly more money for education than girls. Similarly, men and boys received significantly more money for medical care than women and girls. / Graduation date: 1998

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores the issue of ethno-linguistic identity through an examination of everyday practices in two mother-tongue schools in Nepal. While language and ethnicity have remained highly politicised subject in Nepal, the everyday cultural politics of language use inside minority language school has received very limited academic attention. In this thesis, I focus on the ways in which different people understand, experience, and interpret mother-tongue education in their everyday life. Drawing on Bourdieu's notion of social field, I argue that mother-tongue instruction not only concerns the introduction of minority languages in education, but also constitutes an 'arena of struggle', where the idea of an 'educated person' is (re)imagined, and the social positions of ethno-linguistic groups are negotiated. To explain this further, I show that minority language education function as a subfield within the larger social field of national education. On the one hand, everyday language practices in the schools display inward-looking characteristics through the everyday use of mother tongue and the construction of unified ethnic identity within the subfield of minority language education. On the other hand, there were outward-looking dynamics of actively engaging with the national education system. The salience of these processes is the simultaneous membership to multiple groups, claims over public spaces and in the spaces of nationalism, hitherto associated with Nepali. Using the idea of 'simultaneity', I show that social actors in minority language education might not necessarily select between subfield and social field, but instead thrive in their tense intersection. In this process, ethno-linguistic groups are able to construct their own subjectivities by negotiating what it means to be educated in a minority language. This emerging narrative of minority language education may help us to understand the issues of language and ethnicity in a more open-ended way and appreciate the multiple scales in which identities are expressed.

This thesis argues that conversion to Christianity in the Nepali city of Bhaktapur is closely connected with ethical attitudes towards suffering in Bhaktapurian churches. This argument is situated within broader debates in the anthropology of Christianity. Anthropologists have debated the extent to which Christianity is a force for cultural discontinuity, and have often connected it with modernity and individualism. I contribute to these discussions by showing how distinctively Christian conceptions of suffering may promote cultural change by stimulating new understandings of selfhood and ethics. The first three chapters explore the social life of Bhaktapur's Hindu majority. I describe how the last fifty years have seen a process of cultural unsettlement in Bhaktapur; one aspect of this unsettlement has been a disruption of traditional norms of care and deference. It is in this context that the distinctive ethics of Christianity have proved attractive to some. Those who convert have typically experienced a significant episode of suffering, and have felt themselves to be failed by those around them. They find in churches a framework that emphasises the moral significance of inner experience (I call this 'inwardness') and addresses affliction more in terms of ethics than ritual. I describe these ethics in terms of 'care': they stress presence with the afflicted person, engagement with their experience, and appeal to God in prayer. After two chapters describing Christianity in Nepal and Bhaktapur in general terms, I devote four chapters to examining different categories of Bhaktapurian Christians: those who have experienced healing, women, leaders, and youth. I focus on four conversion narratives, and relate these narratives both to other ethnographic materials and to broader trends in Bhaktapurian and global Christianity. I highlight the significance of the values of inwardness and care, and of narrative itself, in the life-worlds of Bhaktapurian Christians.