By Jan Marci Brunson B.A., Eckerd College, 1999 A.M., Brown
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REPRODUCING HIERARCHY: WOMEN’S POSITIONS AND EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE KATHMANDU VALLEY By Jan Marci Brunson B.A., Eckerd College, 1999 A.M., Brown University, 2001 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND May 2008 © Copyright 2008 by Jan Marci Brunson This dissertation by Jan Marci Brunson is accepted in its present form by the Department of Anthropology as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date ______________ _____________________________________________ Lina M. Fruzzetti, Director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ______________ _____________________________________________ David I. Kertzer, Reader Date ______________ _____________________________________________ Daniel J. Smith, Reader Date ______________ _____________________________________________ Lynn Bennett, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date ______________ _____________________________________________ Sheila Bonde Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Jan M. Brunson was born in Tallahassee, Florida, on October 1, 1977. Her first introduction to anthropology was at Rutherford High School as part of the International Baccalaureate Program’s curriculum. She went on to major in anthropology at Eckerd College, and had the opportunity to conduct research in Sri Lanka with her faculty mentor Dr. Victoria Baker through a fellowship from the ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation Student-Faculty Fellows Program. Her passion for teaching and learning was cultivated by participating in the Ford Scholars Program at Eckerd College. After graduating in 1999 with a thesis that received the distinction of honors, she enrolled in the graduate program in anthropology at Brown University. In addition to her graduate education in the Department of Anthropology, Jan was a trainee of the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) at Brown. She also spent three summers at Cornell University for language training in Nepali. This training culminated in dissertation research in Nepal funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and supplementary funds from the PSTC. She graduated from Brown University in 2008. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have contributed to this project and some of them in such profound ways that I am unable to do them justice here. Foremost, I have benefited from the guidance of several mentors at Brown University. I am indebted to Lina Fruzzetti for serving as my thesis advisor, and moreover for ensuring that I developed both breadth and depth in the literature on and of South Asia. I was grateful for Lina’s support as the focus of my project evolved over time. David Kertzer has been a model scholar and writer, setting an example and coaching me in both these areas. No matter how demanding his schedule was, he always made time for me and my research. For setting the highest professional standards and instilling the same in me, I thank him. Dan Smith exhibited the perfect mix of encouragement and criticism as a mentor. His generosity with his time and his willingness to seriously and closely engage my writing and arguments (even in early drafts) was truly impressive. He has been a major influence in my intellectual development, and he greatly enhanced my dissertation with his suggestions. I am grateful to Lynn Bennett for serving as the fourth member and outside reader on my dissertation committee. Her past and ongoing scholarship has and will continue to influence my work. The deficiencies that remain despite their suggestions are mine alone. Also at Brown, I would like thank Pat Symonds in the Department of Anthropology for her advice on professionalization over the years and her graciousness v and warmth as a mentor. Although a list of the ways she has been of assistance is too long to include, I am extremely grateful to Kathy Grimaldi for masterfully and cheerfully handling many of the essential logistical and bureaucratic matters related to graduate school and also for her hugs. Much gratitude is also felt toward my colleagues and friends who offered criticism on various incarnations of the manuscript. For much moral support and patience with reading early drafts, I am deeply indebted to Pilapa Esara, Andrew Huebner, and Susi Krehbiel Keefe. I owe special thanks to Andrew and his family for encouragement during the early stages of writing. For support during the intense final months of writing, I am grateful for Benjamin Young. Benjamin provided much intellectual inspiration, editing assistance, and sustenance, and he frequently devoted his energy to helping me clarify my thinking. My work has benefitted substantially from conversations with him and Jason Sears. In Nepal, I am grateful to all the people who welcomed me into their homes and their lives, especially the Shrestha family. They provided me with the kind of love that only family can give and vouched for me as an upstanding person to others in their community. Manoj Kumar Shrestha played a crucial role in mapping and taking a household census of the community and in the administration of the survey questionnaire. He spent countless hours sitting with me and translating tapes of interviews together. His assiduousness in his work as a research assistant was unmatched, and he was always ready with suggestions to solve the myriad of logistical problems. I would also like to thank Dambar Pariyar for assisting with administering the initial survey. Mina Manandhar, my lead research assistant, assisted with translations, but her major vi contribution was the perceptiveness, tact, and astuteness with which she conducted interviews with women in the case studies. I was able to depend upon her to handle delicate relationships with professionalism and care. She also became an amicable and valued companion for months of walking up and down the mountainside in the process of conducting interviews. I also thank Geeta Manandhar, who was more my sage than she was ever my language teacher, and who acted as an older sister and friend. In terms of institutional support, I am grateful for financial support for the research from a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award and my subsequent relationship with the Fulbright Commission in Nepal and Michael Gill. For supplementary research funds, I thank the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. My first few trips to Nepal prior to the dissertation research went more smoothly because of the assistance of the Cornell-Nepal Study Program, and I am grateful for the lasting connections and friendships that were first initiated by Kathryn March and Banu Oja. Finally, for everything they have done to help me achieve my dreams, and especially for providing me with the space to define those dreams however I choose, I thank my family – Mom, Dad, and Sherri. I find it somehow appropriate that in Nepal nieces have particularly loving relationships with their uncles, because I have a doting uncle, Jimmy, whom I thank for taking such an interest in my success. I dedicate this dissertation to my grandfather, James E. Stockton, in recognition of his unconditional love and support throughout my graduate school career. I will always admire his adherence to his values of honesty, loyalty, and persistence and his dedication to family. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Prelude: A Convergence of Personas in the Hindu Kingdom 1 Introduction: Women, Agency, and Reproduction 12 Introductions Defining Women Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Procreation Women Experiencing and Producing Social Change 1 Methods and Encounters 40 The Research Setting Enter the Anthropologist Overview of Methods Encounters 2 Social Hierarchies in Context 62 Constructs of Caste in South Asia The Distinctiveness of Caste in Nepal Rethinking Women’s Autonomy and Caste 3 From Daughters to Mothers-in-law: Women’s Positionality over the Life Course 88 Life as a Daughter, Labor as a Daughter-in-Law, Uncertainty as a Mother-in-Law Like a Potter’s Wheel: Women and the Family Cycle 4 Describing and Inscribing Reproductive Bodies 116 A Descriptive Overview of Maternal Health Hidden Pregnancies Home Births and Hospital Emergencies Protected Postpartum Periods 5 Conflicting Discourses and Agentive Bodies 140 The Unlikely “Happy Family” Son Preference and Fertility Decline What Good Are Sons? Deliberating over Giving Birth Again Conclusion: Reproductive Realities in Nepal 167 Bibliography 174 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Ethnic and Caste Groups in Vishnumati, 2001 46 Figure 1.2 Parbatiya Caste Groups Highlighted, Vishnumati 2001 46 Table 1.1 Number of Case Studies by Caste and Family Type 58 Table 2.1 Caste Hierarchy of the Muluki Ain 72 Table 4.1 Antenatal Care 118 Table 4.2 Place of Delivery 119 Table 4.3 Delivery Assistance 120 Table 4.4 Birth Preparedness: Women and Men 132 Figure 5.1 Trends in Modern Contraceptive Use among Currently Married 144 Women, Nepal 1996-2006 ix PRELUDE A CONVERGENCE OF PERSONAS IN THE HINDU KINGDOM In the early morning haze, on the day of Saraswati puja, a Nepali friend and I rushed to catch a local “microbus” for the trip to Swyambunath stupa in Kathmandu to write our names on the walls surrounding the Saraswati shrine. What could be more auspicious for a doctoral student conducting research in Nepal than adding her name to the countless names of students hoping to be blessed by the goddess of learning and knowledge? That year, in 2005, I noticed that more names surrounding the shrine were written in Roman script (instead of the Nepali Devanagri script) compared to what I had informally observed the previous year. If only measuring social change was as simple as comparing the percentage of names written in Roman script every year for Saraswati puja. The ride to Swyambunath, however, was an even more poignant example of the difficulty involved in making sense of what is “Nepali.” At the bus stop just down the hill (pahaad - what would be considered a mountain by people who had not grown up in the land of the Himalayas) we piled into a microbus that was taking passengers to Swyambu.