Livelihood Change and Household Strategies: Social Displacement of the Upper Class in Dhading

Authors

  • Youba Raj Luintel Central Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v9i0.14021

Keywords:

Capitalism, class, social change, social divergence, underdevelopment

Abstract

This article examines livelihoods transition among agrarian households in a cluster of villages adjacent to Kathmandu in a post-Neoliberal context. It specifically looks at the way these households respond to capitalist expansion in Nepal’s agrarian rural setting privileged to draw cash earnings. Looked at from the quest of longer term social change, this article identifies a great deal of similarity in household responses along class lines, and thus, concludes that household strategies broadly embrace class-specific behaviour. In identifying patterns of household response, this article also argues that class-differentiated analysis of household response can potentially illuminate social science understanding of the way capitalism penetrates into the countryside and brings social differentiation. Finally, this article demonstrates that social differentiation of agrarian households in rural Nepal is a mechanism of siphoning off of the rural surplus somewhere else (in this research context Kathmandu)–a mechanism widely attributed for an uneven development and underdevelopment of countryside Nepal.

 

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Author Biography

Youba Raj Luintel, Central Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Luintel, Youba Raj Ph.D. is Associate Professor in Sociology at Tribhuvan University and teaches sociological theories and social change studies in MA and M. Phil. programmes at the Central Department of Sociology, Kirtipur. He has earned his PhD from Newcastle University in the UK and MA in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands.

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Published

2015-12-07

How to Cite

Luintel, Y. R. (2015). Livelihood Change and Household Strategies: Social Displacement of the Upper Class in Dhading. Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 9, 26–52. https://doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v9i0.14021

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Section

Articles