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MARIAL CENTER COLLOQUIUM Kathryn S. March (Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies, Cornell University; "Evolving Family" research project team member) Global Families: Understanding Wage Migration From Nepal Wednesday, April 5, 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m
In this presentation, Dr. March will reflect on 30 years of anthropological research based in the small mountain community of Mhanegang. In 1975, a negligible percentage of the population of Mhanegang had ever migrated out to work; by 2005, almost 15 percent were working outside of the village, notably in Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. A generation ago, every household in this community was organized for subsistence agriculture; marriage, inheritance, family, work, and tradition conceptualized the community as an integral whole, with a known past and knowable future. Today, every household has been affected by the growing global wage labor market; every aspect that previously reinforced the sense of local integrity and continuity is being tested and scattered. For some, these changes have brought new opportunities for income, education, and adventure--transforming families dramatically, and in ways that the men, women and children in them generally perceive as desirable. For others, global forays have further impoverished their families, created ever sharpening disparities between the sexes and the generations, and, overall, not only not widened, but arguably narrowed, their horizons. Using life history narratives, intensive interviews, community ritual performance and song, as well as household survey, census and economic measures, March seeks to understand what these profound changes in livelihood, household, community, family, marriage and parenthood mean from the perspective of the local and of the personal. On the one hand, this means placing specific families' experiences within the wider context of Nepali wage migration: understanding historical, legal and market forces helps predict why some benefit and others lose. In this regard, then, this research will try to reduce current sources of exploitation and abuse by informing government policy. This research is also about the personal and familial meanings vested in migration. As people interpret what it means to leave, to stay behind, to send or be sent out, to be able to choose to go or stay or not, they are creating vastly different senses of themselves, their identities, their community, and value. Kathryn S. March is professor of anthropology and feminist/gender/sexuality studies at Cornell University. She also is a core faculty member of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and is active in both the South Asia Program and the Program on Gender and Global Change. She is part of the Evolving Family Project at the Institute for the Social Sciences. Since 1973, she has explored questions of culture, gender, and social change in Himalayan Asia, where she primarily works with indigenous minority ethnic peoples such as the Sherpa and Tamang. Professor March has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Department of Education. She has been a Mellon Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe. Her books include Women’s Informal Associations: Catalysts for Change (with R. Taqqu, 1985), and "If Each Comes Halfway": Meeting Tamang Women in Nepal(2002). She founded the Cornell-Nepal Study Program, a collaborative program with the national Tribhuvan University of Nepal, which supports research by approximately 40 young scholars annually. Last year, she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar teaching at Tribhuvan University, consulting on gender and development for the National Planning Commission of the Nepali government, and conducting research.
DIRECTIONS TO THE MARIAL CENTER The MARIAL Center is located on the 4th floor of the main building of Emory's Briarcliff Campus, 1256 Briarcliff Road. There is ample parking close to the building. Alternatively, you may take the Emory shuttle (Route A). The Emory shuttle (Route A) provides transportation from the main campus to the MARIAL Center every 20 minutes (a 5-10 minute ride). For the shortest travel time, board the shuttle in front of the B. Jones Center or at the corner of Dowman and Fishburne (across from Glenn Memorial) at approximately 4, 24, and 44 minutes after each hour. A complete schedule and the route map are available on the web at http://www.epcs.emory.edu/AltTransp/route-a.htm Please tell the receptionist at the front window
that you are here for the
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