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Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal

Campbell, Ben

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Abstract

Labour migration from subsistence households in Tamang‐speaking communities of Northern Nepal heralds their transition from an agrarian to a remittance economy. This migration entails the abandonment of subsistence labour processes that once wove households together in reciprocal mutuality. Migration thus dislocates persons from moral economic institutions and norms, and reciprocity is replaced by cash‐calculative decisions about food systems. However, migration is a broader sociocultural response to historical precarities and struggle over de‐territorializing effects of state development. Moving beyond standard ‘peasant economy’ forms of analysis, and domestic autarky in particular, this essay explores neglected areas of the comparative anthropology of subsistence labour, and situates the ethnography of work and power relations in indigenous and other critiques of development nationalism in Nepal. Redirecting labour abroad creates tensions in domestic reproduction. These surface in intra‐clan gift exchange, in managing agro‐pastoral viability, and in the ritual maintenance of order among humans and nonhumans that invokes ancestral migrations for dealing with dilemmas about contemporary dispersals.

Citation

Campbell, B. (2018). Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(S1), 151-165. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12805

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 5, 2017
Online Publication Date Mar 12, 2018
Publication Date Apr 1, 2018
Deposit Date Feb 2, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 12, 2020
Journal Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Print ISSN 1359-0987
Electronic ISSN 1467-9655
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue S1
Pages 151-165
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12805
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1339768

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Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Campbell, Ben (2018). Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24(S1): 151-165, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12805. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.






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