View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Agder University Research Archive Doing and Undoing Child Marriage in Nepal An Exploratory Study Using Institutional Ethnography Naomi Curwen Supervisor Hege Wallevik This master’s thesis is carried out as a part of the education at the University of Agder and is therefore approved as a part of this education. However, this does not imply that the University answers for the methods that are used or the conclusions that are drawn. University of Agder, 2014-2016 Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Global Development and Planning “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” – C.S Lewis For the strong, beautiful girls of Nepal. Thank you for sharing your stories with me. 2 Acknowledgements Travelling alone to Nepal to conduct fieldwork and then write a thesis has been a learning process like no other. It has been very challenging, yet very inspiring. It has been an emotional rollercoaster, but I remain with valuable lessons learned and new perspectives after this ride. Although I feel exhausted upon finishing, looking back at this journey and everything I have learned I can say without a doubt that I would do it all again! So many people have in various and valuable ways contributed to make this thesis possible, and I am grateful for all of you. A special thanks goes to my supervisor, Hege Wallevik. Thank you for introducing me to institutional ethnography and challenging me to do something new and out of my comfort zone. Thank you for believing in me and supporting me through the whole process. Your guidance and reassurance has been invaluable. I would also like to personally thank May-Linda Magnussen for taking a lot of time to go through my thesis and give me feedback. Your competence took me to the next level. To all my colleagues at the Mission Covenant Church of Norway, for being so understanding and flexible during my whole master’s programme. The fieldwork would not have been possible without the people from Strømme Foundation. Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to conduct research within your SAMVAD project. It has been so inspiring to see your work and and the difference it makes for the people of Nepal, especially the adolescent girls. I especially would like to thank the staff at SF Nepal and their partner organisations, for warmly receiving me and doing your utmost to assist me in any way necessary. To my informants. First and foremost the wonderful nepali girls, to whom my thesis is dedicated, who have shared their stories and experiences with me. I truly admire your strength and determination, and I am very grateful for everything you have taught me. A big thanks to all my informants in general who took of their time to talk, share and explain, and to my village host family for taking such good care of me. The memories from my stay in the village will always be with me. To close friends and family, for rooting for me and believing in me in times when I doubted myself and felt like giving up. I would love to acknowledge you all by name, as you are all dear to me. However, the acknowledgements would go on indefinitely. Know that I treasure the encouragement and support I get from you. You make my life so much richer. 3 Abstract Child marriage is a practice that occurs across regions, cultures and religions. Every year approximately 15 million girls under the age of eighteen get married. The practice often has serious impacts on the lives of the girls themselves, and child marriage threatens the progress in six out of eight development goals related to education, health, poverty and gender equality. The main drivers have been identified as tradition, poverty, gender norms, security and weak law enforcement, but despite available research a lot more remains to be understood about child marriage. The thesis does not theorise about why it happens, but explores the actualities of the doing and ‘undoing’ of child marriage in two districts of Nepal, Surkhet and Kapilvastu. The study is inspired by a method of inquiry called institutional ethnography (IE), which challenges how mainstream sociology clamps a theoretical framework over any inquiry, and how this determines how the actual world will be attended to. IE promotes a different understanding of the social as people’s coordinated activities, and the research starts out in lived life instead of theory. The thesis is a discovery into social research itself and seeks to explore what an alternative sociology might add to the understanding of child marriage. Using an IE perspective creates an understanding and appreciation of the complexity of people’s experiences. What I found is that the reality is much more complex than what an understanding of child marriage as the result of poverty, tradition or gender norms offers. Using so-called work knowledge as data gives a more detailed account of what the practice of child marriage actually entails for the people involved. It opens up for descriptions of activities that might otherwise not have been included. Further, the aim of IE is to explore how people’s activities are embedded in and shaped by trans-local relations. Not viewing child marriage as socially organised risks assigning causality or agency to concepts such as gender norms or tradition, which obscures what actually goes on. Additionally it risks blaming the practice on people and their characteristics, which maintains typologies and stereotypes. 4 Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Abbreviations .............................................................................................................................................. 7 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Background ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Purpose of thesis ........................................................................................................................................ 10 Into the field: context of the study ........................................................................................................... 12 Strømme Foundation and the SAMVAD project ............................................................................... 14 Surkhet district...................................................................................................................................... 16 Thesis structure ......................................................................................................................................... 19 LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................................ 20 The gap between the social as written and the social as experienced ................................................... 21 Positionality ............................................................................................................................................... 24 The social as reifications ........................................................................................................................... 25 The social as happening ............................................................................................................................ 27 Doing gender.............................................................................................................................................. 28 Texts, discourse and ruling relations....................................................................................................... 30 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................... 33 Defining a topic and problematic ............................................................................................................ 33 The X-factor .............................................................................................................................................. 35 Altering my research ................................................................................................................................ 37 Fieldwork ................................................................................................................................................... 38 Establishing field contacts .................................................................................................................... 38 Planning the fieldwork ......................................................................................................................... 39 Challenges .............................................................................................................................................. 41 Ethical evaluations ................................................................................................................................ 42 About interviewing ...............................................................................................................................