Abstract

Born to be a Butcher?
A Study of Social Mobility and Symbolic Struggles of Low Castes in the Kathmandu Valley

This thesis investigates how pervasive social, political and economic changes affect members of certain low castes in the Kathmandu Valley, and how these changes face them with new strategies which can be expected to have significant repercussions on their socio-economic position in Nepal as well as on the legitimacy of caste the hierarchy. This field of investigation is not only important for understanding an important development issue, i.e. the effects of capitalism on the dismantling of the traditional social hierarchy and on the emergence of new forms of differentiation. It may also contribute in some measure to theoretical issues in contemporary anthropology, e.g. the debate between Dumont, McKim Marriott, Barth and others on the nature of caste; the perspective from Bourdieu, Gramsci, Guha, Marcus and others on hegemony, resistance and accommodation. 

Keywords:
Nepal, Khadgi, low caste, modernisation, hierarchy, caste, Bourdieu, symbolic capital, symbolic struggles, social mobility