Modern dharma

Based on 15 months of ethnographic research in 2018-2019, this thesis explores the making of a modern domestic dharma through the negotiation of social roles and relationships in the pursuit of an idealised notion of well-being among Hindu Newar middle-class families in Bhaktapur, Nepal. By examining personal narratives of conflict and adjustment through the theoretical lens of Husserlian ‘intersubjectivity’ and the notion of ‘conversation’ by Schutz, I demonstrate that through inter-personal conversations, social actors actively work to coordinate with one another to attune their existential dimensions. More specifically, I argue that the negotiation of domestic moralities is inextricable from the making of moral selves, and that it plays a decisive role in shaping broader processes of social change. \nThroughout the chapters, I explore the motivations and actions that are shaping, reinforcing or breaking down relationships in the name of well-being, with a focus on the emic notions of ‘mutual understanding’ (āpasī samājdari) and ‘lonely heart talks’ (mane-khanlhagu). In chapter three, I investigate parent-child relationships, revealing that when colliding aspirations cause conflict, this is often dealt with through avoidance. In chapter four, I show that marriage practices act as a turning point in the making of young adults’ independent identities through the affirmation of individual and couple’s well-being. In chapter five, I discuss how conflicting interests in joint households lead to a revision of value hierarchies and the partition of domestic spaces. In chapter six, I explore how external social structures of support, such as the emerging friendship guthis which provide funerary and economic assistance, create the possibility to go against pre-existing norms without incurring social death. In chapter seven, I turn to the condition of the elderly, showing their struggle to reshape their own moral selves in order to empathise with their children’s living conditions. Taken all together, the stories discussed demonstrate that in Bhaktapur well-being coincides with a balance between the achievement of one’s goals and the maintenance of domestic harmony (ajur ajur) through the negotiation of needs and desires. \nBy examining the interrelated and mutually influencing ways in which people revise relationships, shape their moral selves and ultimately negotiate social change, this thesis sheds new light on the processes through which moral ideas and behaviours are negotiated for the purposes of attaining well-being from a domestic perspective. More broadly, by looking at the domestic as the locus of the negotiations between social change and continuity, and at conflict as a dialogical process of cultural revision, this work contributes to recent debates in the fields of kinship studies, anthropology of conflict and moral anthropology, providing a new perspective on the making of moral modernities in Nepal

Buddhism · Dharma · Middle class · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nepal · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

• Mesocosm

  Robert I Levy•Mesocosm•1991

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• Suitably Modern

  Mark Liechty•Suitably Modern•2003

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