The patterns of paid and unpaid work adopted by migrants families with dependent children are more or less similar to that of prevailing working pattern of men and women of Australian born couples. A case study with 28 couple families, 14 husbands and 14 wives who migrated from Nepal under "skill" or "professional" category and the literature review on paid and unpaid work of couple families with dependent children show that in both families the trend of change of working pattern in paid and unpaid work is similar. With the increased participation of married women in the paid labour force, men increased participation in household work. There is increased household work for both husbands and wives, but women tend to do more household "inside" and childcare work than men. In the mean time, men tend to do more work in the "masculine" sphere of "outside" work in house maintenance, repair and car care. The only factor that differentiates working pattern of migrant families with Australian born families is the experience of migration and the category that they migrated. The change of working practice of paid and unpaid work of migrant families are affected by the change of family type from extended family to two generational family and their education and previous work experience that they brought along with them. Professional migrants who migrated family as a "unit" migrated spouse and dependent children together and they made their own decision to migrate, unlike other categories of migrants who migrated from political or economic pressure. One of the important experiences of migrant families is that there are new opportunity, new lifestyle, new intimacy and companionship and new sharing of work between husbands and wives after migration. At the same time, there are losses of extended family relatives, close friends and cultural event which affects their day to day lives. There are Australian based friends who provided support in the initial period of migration but these families do not provide regular assistance or support which family relatives provided in Nepal.

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This paper focuses on the foreign policy behavior and strategy of weak and small states in the international system. Further, it explains the behavior and strategies employed by those states by examining several concepts and theories and applying them on the case of Nepal. In a realist world and among states that are most interested in their own integrity and survival, and partly in maximizing their power, weak and small states like Nepal try to keep a neutral position between all actors, try to maintain and extend bilateral relations to the immediate neighbors and other actors in the international system, and further integrate themselves into regional and international frameworks to secure their survival. Because they are the most vulnerable actors, the study of those states and their behavior and strategies is both interesting and compelling. Methodologically, this paper employs interviews as the main source of data and additionally peruses the foreign policy reports of Nepal from the last five years (2015-2019). The data is being analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. After studying the case and its implications, the author suggests that especially geographic patterns are important to understand the foreign policy of weak and small states, and further neutrality and bilateral as well as multilateral relations are indispensable for those actors to secure their integrity and survival in the international system.

Khumbu, part of Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park in eastern Nepal and an UNESCO World Heritage site, is home to the Sherpa people, ethnic Tibetan Buddhists who migrated to the region more than 500 years ago. Sherpas animate the landscape with localized water, tree, rock, and land spirits, identify sacred mountains, mainly associated with the Bönpo and Tibetan yullha traditions, and some view the landscape as a beyul, a sacred place and hidden valley protecting Buddhist people and beliefs in times of turmoil and need. These beliefs protect the natural environment through religious practices and taboos against environmentally harmful behaviors and activities. Associated ritual practice, perceptions, and mythology encode Sherpa culture and beliefs in the landscape. This research contributes to discussions of place, sacred landscapes, and conservation by documenting older Sherpa residents’ constructions of Khumbu as a sacred landscape in two Khumbu villages. Interviews and participant observations reveal a socially constructed sacred landscape expressing a distinct Khumbu Sherpa identity.

Every four years, in the middle of a cold winter night, devotees bearing images of 126 Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other important deities assemble in the Nepalese city of Patan for an elaborate gift giving festival known as Samyak Mahādāna (“The Perfect Great Gift”). Celebrated by Nepal’s Newar Buddhist community, Samyak honors one of the Buddhas of the historical past called Dīpaṅkara. Dīpaṅkara’s importance in Buddhism is rooted in ancient textual and visual narratives that promote the cultivation of generosity through religious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). During Samyak, large images of Dīpaṅkara Buddha ceremoniously walk in procession to the event site, aided by a man who climbs inside the wooden body to assume the legs of the Buddha. Once arranged at the event, Dīpaṅkara is honored with an array of offerings until dusk the following day. This dissertation investigates how Newar Buddhists utilize art and ritual at Samyak to reenact and reinforce ancient Buddhist narratives in their contemporary lives. The study combines art historical methods of iconographic analysis with a contextual study of the ritual components of the Samyak Mahādāna to analyze the ways religious spectacle embeds core Buddhist values within in the multilayered components of art, ritual, and communal performance. Principally, Samyak reaffirms the foundational Buddhist belief in the cultivation of generosity (Skt. dāna pāramitā) through meritorious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). However, the synergy of image and ritual performance at Samyak provides a critical framework to examine the artistic, religious, and ritual continuities of past and present in the Newar Buddhist community of the Kathmandu Valley. An analysis of the underlying meta-narrative and conceptualization of Samyak suggests the construction of a dynamic visual narrative associated with sacred space, ritual cosmology, and religious authority. Moreover, this dissertation demonstrates the role of Samyak Mahādāna in constructing Buddhist identity in Nepal, as the festival provides an opportunity to examine how Newar Buddhists utilize art, ritual, and performance to reaffirm their ancient Buddhist heritage.

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.

This thesis seeks to identify the place and significance of religion in constructions of ethnic identity and experiences of belonging among Gurungs in the UK. It assesses both the vision of Gurung ethnic identity put forward by ethnic organizations, which is itself much disputed, and the extent to which this vision either reflects or shapes religion 'on the ground'. It argues that debates and controversies surrounding Gurung religious identity are influenced by ethnic politics in Nepal, by social changes and modernist ideas about the superiority of world religions over local traditions, by the pervasive discourse regarding exclusivity in religion, as well as by historical, but highly contested, status differences within Gurung society. It also suggests that those debates are complicated by divergent conceptions of 'religion', and of how 'religion' relates to 'culture'. When considering religion 'on the ground', the thesis assesses the extent to which Buddhism and Bon are practised as an expression of Gurung culture, thus reinforcing a sense of belonging within the Gurung community, and the extent to which particular religious traditions strengthen a broader Nepali identity or universal orientation, whereby religious belonging outweighs ethnic loyalties. It concludes that both orientations are in evidence and, in general, are considered mutually reinforcing. However, from the perspective of Christian Gurungs and followers of Sai Baba - paths often considered foreign to Gurung culture - a tension is more evident. For many Nepalis, however, religious identity is complex and multiple. Many include elements of different religious traditions in their regular practice and there is a whole range of customs, values, attitudes and understandings of religion which are shared by Nepalis but which are understood to belong to no particular religion, or to all. I suggest that it is as much through these aspects of religion, as through commitment to the vision of Gurung religious identity officially promoted, that a sense of commonality and belonging is created within the diaspora.

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