Beyond sex and gender in a career of engagement with Nepal

Abstract

My engagement with Nepal has been driven by two forces. First is the desire to understand how and why, even whether, men and women have substantially different lives with divergent opportunities and meanings; and second is the aspiration to apply this knowledge to change, specifically to produce greater social justice and equity for women and men. In this presentation, I will explore some of what I have learned from almost 50 years of work on sex, gender, and social change in Nepal. I will try to show how this work has evolved over these pivotal years in the anthropology of sex and gender. Examples will be drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic fieldwork among Western Tamang in the Kispang Gaun Palika region, in the context of equally pivotal years of change in Nepal.

Biography:

Kathryn S. March is Graduate Professor and Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Feminist/Gender/Sexuality Studies, and Public Affairs at Cornell University, where she received her PhD in 1979. She first went to Nepal in 1973 and has lived with indigenous Tibeto-origin peoples in the Himalayas, specifically the Sherpa and Tamang, and worked on questions of gender, social justice and change, since 1975.

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