Cultural traditions and economic practices in Nepalese mountain villages

Mountain Village in Nepal

The cultural diversity that exists among the peoples of the world is one of the things that make the study of anthropology fascinating, endless, and rewarding all at the same time. Moreover, as much as technology has changed the world, for better or for worse, there are still examples of groups of people who have remained loyal to their primitive roots despite the drastic advances in the world all around them. For example, within the rich cultural tapestry of the world, undoubtedly one of the most fascinating cultures to be found in the entire annals of anthropology is that of the mountain villages of Nepal. The contradictions, nuances, customs and beliefs of these ancient people is worthy of closer examination. In this paper, the theory and issues of this culture and setting will be presented and discussed, in comparison and contrast to those of other parts of the world.

Who are the People of the Mountains of Nepal?

In order to be able to fully discuss and understand the many aspects of the social, economic and familial customs of the mountain dwellers of Nepal, it is extremely useful to first consider a demographic profile of the Nepalese people. Nepal is a relatively small nation, located in Asia with such huge and powerful neighbors as China. While Nepal is influenced somewhat by the influence of other cultures and its geographic neighbors, in many respects, the mountain villages of Nepal have remained the same as they were thousands of years ago. Many of the agricultural techniques and tools that are used today have not changed to any degree since the Stone Age. These simple people have been able to remain loyal to their roots and traditions and still survive despite many of the changes in other parts of the world.

An Overview of Familial Structures and Bonds

The various ways that families are formed and live their everyday lives, for all of their differences, typically have some common factors within them. Overall, when speaking of cultural defined relationships between people who are commonly considered to have family ties, one refers to the concepts of kinship (Palomar, 2006). Within the structure of kinship, there are rules, norms and customs that are established, such as the ideas of passing of inheritance rights from one generation to another, forming the identity of individuals as members of a group, as well as blood ties, which is known as consanguinity (Palomar, 2006).

Specifically speaking of the life in Nepalese villages, there exist some very interesting parallels and paradoxes in comparison to other more advanced cultures. In reality, many of the villages in the mountains of Nepal are hardly advanced past the conditions of the Stone Age (Hitchcock, 1980). Influenced to a great deal by the culture of China, a country which borders Nepal, the kinship to be found there is very similar to that of the Chinese. In Nepal, the family, or parabar as the Nepalese would refer to it, represents a very broad line of many relatives, which extends from the primitive village life that many mountaineers live to that of the cities, where many of the younger generation migrate in order to advance their livelihoods and to start a new existence beyond their humble beginnings (Childs, 2004). Within these extended family units, the labor, which is often farm based, is divided equally, and in many cases, if a brother or sister leaves the main family unit to live away from it, he or she is given a share of their inheritance in advance.

Kinship in itself is extremely important to these people; like many societies, kinship is a main principle of social organization along with age and gender for example (Childs, 2004). Further, kinship is the uniting factor that links one generation to another, which could be a main reason for many of the Nepalese customs being sustained for century after century.

Status Symbols in the Mountains of Nepal

While it may sound like a misnomer to discuss the concept of status symbols in the mountain villages of Nepal, these symbols do exist, admittedly different in nature than those of the Western world, however. Of course, Western culture often holds material consumer products in high regard as status symbols, such as homes, automobiles, elaborate clothing, and the like. In the case of the Nepalese, however, the case is vastly different. In the mountain villages, land is the primary commodity that is held in the highest regard as a symbol of status, wealth and power. This is so for very specific reasons, given the fact that land is in short supply in Nepal, land is vital in a mostly agrarian society such as that of the Nepalese villages, and the very simple way of life that the villagers lead makes many of the common Western status symbols unnecessary at best and outright ridiculous at the very least.

The status symbol of land in Nepal seems to be mostly centered on the males of the culture; for the females, who are generally prohibited from owning land, education is something that is one tangible measure of women's status was their educational attainment. Although the constitution offers women equal educational opportunities, many social, economic, and cultural factors contributed to lower enrollment and higher dropout rates for girls. Illiteracy imposed the greatest hindrance to enhancing equal opportunity and status for women. They were caught in a vicious circle imposed by the patriarchic society. Their lower status hindered their education, and the lack of education, in turn, constricted their status and position. Although the female literacy rate has improved noticeably over the years, the level in the early 1990s fell far short of the male level. The level of educational attainment among female children of wealthy and educated families was much higher than that among female children of poor families. This class disparity in educational attainment was also true for boys. In Nepal, as in many societies, education was heavily class-biased.

By the early 1990s, a direct correlation existed between the level of education and status. Educated women were given more opportunities to advance themselves, achieve independence, and perhaps even break from the restrictions of mountain life to study, work and live in the cities of Nepal. Whatever the achievement of the educated woman outside of her family, however, an educated woman did not necessarily hold a higher status at home than her uneducated counterpart. Also within the family, a woman's status, especially a daughter-in-law's status, was more closely tied to her husband's authority and to her parental family's wealth and status than anything else.

Gender Roles

Anthropologically speaking, the baseline of measuring the status of men or women in terms of their gender is done within the context of their access to knowledge, economic resources, and political power, as well as their freedom when given an active role in the process of decision making. More specifically, within the mountain regions of Nepal, as long as recorded history has existed, women have clearly been put in a role that is subordinate to men in the majority of the Nepalese ethnic groups, with some exceptions. Without bogging down the research with minute details, suffice it to say that some regions provide more freedom to women than others, due to a variety of factors. One common trait in most of the regions of Nepal however is the power that the senior woman of each family holds. As a form of cultural tradition, the senior woman controls resources such as food, medicine, clothing, coordinating the planting and harvesting of crops, and budgeting the spending of money and purchasing of the goods that the family needs. The younger women are many times relegated to the more menial daily chores that need to be performed within the family, and despite having to use more physical energy than the older women, are typically allotted less food, even in comparison to the males of the same age group.

Restrictions to Sexual Access

As a cultural standard of sorts, most, if not all cultures have defined rules regarding sexual access, and the lack thereof. Within the scope of marriage, with few exceptions, sexual contact with those outside of the marriage is universally viewed off-limits especially for the woman and in most cases for the man as well. Beyond this more defined structure of limited access, it is also common in most cultures for sexual access to children, close relatives, and those unable to make a conscious consent to sexual contact to be considered taboo. This protects those who are unable to protect themselves from unwanted sexual solicitation, and also gives the culture a baseline of morality and standards of conduct to assure the effective functioning of the culture overall. This being said, it is also important to realize that for as primitive as the Nepalese mountain villagers may be in some respects, they are also very conscious of limiting inappropriate sexual access to certain members of society, with special protection being afforded to women, as gender is very important to these people.

Marriage in Nepalese Culture

Related to gender in the Nepalese culture is the issue of marriage. The concept of marriage exists in one form or another in virtually all cultures, and within the framework of marriage, there are certain universal traits that are true in the culture of Nepal, indicative of many other cultures in other parts of the world.

Marriage, broadly defined, is the socially recognized union of two or more people, generally viewed as an effective way to regulate heterosexual intercourse by determining socially acceptable sexual partners (Palomar, 2006). Generally speaking, the act of marriage between two or more people places people outside of the marriage off-limits in terms of sexual activity. What this type of an arrangement serves to achieve is a definition of morality, social order, and respect for the union of people together in a marital setting. The bond of marriage, in the case of the mountain people of Nepal, takes on several important implications. Through marriage, the Nepalese form political alliances for the gaining and holding of power, attainment of respect and wealth/material possessions, although as noted earlier, these material possessions generally focus on land and agriculture, and not many of the more consumer-oriented goods that may be coveted by other cultures internationally. Because of the order that marriages provides in Nepal and other parts of the world, cultures are able to maintain internal order, prolong the life and vitality of the family unit, and interact with others within their culture who are not necessarily family members, but have some commonality with the family of their spouse in terms of values, customs, and priorities.

One of the most important parts of the marriage process in any situation is the means by which an individual chooses marriage partner(s); generally, this selection process tends to be culturally defined (Palomar, 2006). In the Western tradition, affection, physical attraction, sexual compatibility and love are important criteria when selecting spouses. Beyond this, on of the main attributes that many cultures emphasize in the selection of marriage partners is physical beauty. While the concept of beauty is highly subjective most of the time, cultures often do hold certain universal standards as the norm for the evaluation of a potential spouse, one of the most significant being physical beauty. This beauty is based in large part upon cultural traditions as well; for example, some groups maintain that women who are more curvaceous are the standard of beauty, but others stand by the belief that women should be extremely thin in order to be considered the most attractive and suitable for marriage, reflecting a difference of viewpoint and opinion among the world's cultures themselves.

Ethnocentricities can also contribute in large part to the perception of beauty, as some races of people unfortunately view certain others as unattractive, whereas some cultures are broadly considered to be physically beautiful simply by their inclusion in that group.

Mating Patterns in Culture

The Nepalese culture is not much different from other cultures in terms of the matting patterns that exist. Despite centuries of advancement, there are still some norms that are maintained by the people of Nepal. Whether for economic/political reasons, or to promote the continuance of the family blood line, like many other nations, Nepal holds marriage in extremely high regard. Conversely, those who remain unmarried are viewed to be at a disadvantage in some cases, leading to pity from others, and to be undesirable, leading to unfair hatred in others, making the bold assumption that one remains unmarried mostly due to some sort of character flaw that they possess which makes them unworthy of the benefits of marriage. Moving from the remote mountain villages of Nepal to the larger, more urban areas, the perception of unmarried people seems to be somewhat more favorable, perhaps due to the more liberal viewpoints of city dwellers, or perhaps even due to the influence of other cultures in the melting pots of the cities, where diversity exists and different points-of-view are often shared tolerantly with others. In all societies, whether expressly regulated by law or guided through tradition, there are rules of one form or another to regulate the finalizing of a marriage "contract." These rules include privileges, rights and responsibilities of the couple to be married, including the agreement of guidelines for sexual access, the having and caretaking of a child or children, division of labor, and the extension of kinship bonds to the relatives of the spouse. As one can see, these rules, and how they are carried out, can vary greatly due to cultural customs or even the established law.

Proliferation of the Members of a Culture

The future of any culture depends upon new people being introduced into the culture; this introduction most often occurs through reproduction of the members of that culture to create children who will grow up in that culture itself. Despite the obvious benefits that having large numbers of children would have in increasing the size of the ranks of a culture, the practicality of supporting and providing for all of these children inevitably leads to the need to limit the number of births, or at the very least make it possible for births to occur in a properly scheduled way so that each child that has the potential to be a healthy, positive addition to the cultural makeup can do so to the best of their ability, without being overcrowded or pushed aside by less viable individuals. On the darker side of this initiative exist the methods of terminating pregnancies, but many cultures have realized the value of abstinence as a viable birth control method, a method which in many cases is compatible with religious and moral convictions.

In extreme cases, some cultures practice infanticide, or the method of controlling population growth by killing young children. While there is no evidence to suggest that this is present to any noticeable degree in Nepal, its huge neighbor, China, has been reputed to embrace this practice on the heels of laws that limit the number of children that women can give birth to, which were constructed to avoid overpopulation, which can lead to poverty and hunger just as easily as a shortage of laborers would on a farm in the mountain of Nepal.

Other Factors that Stifle Cultural Development

For a huge nation like China, there are unique factors that come into play with the net effect of greatly slowing down population growth and cultural development. The large size and political position of China dictates that the nation often finds itself in armed conflict with other nations. This has a dual effect on the growth of the Chinese population; first, every male that is killed is not only one less person to participate in the workforce, politics and family life of China, but it is also one less person to go forth and create more children. This reduction in the number of children conceived likewise effects the lives of Chinese women, as the number of unmarried women is likely to increase, weakening the power of the family unit, and causing large numbers of Chinese children to be uncared for, forcing many of these children out of China for adoption by American families for example.

Procreation in Nepal's Mountain Villages

In the mountain villages of Nepal, the conception and raising of children is vastly different that many other "more developed" nations, mostly as a matter of economic necessity, but also due to the religious and moral traditions of the original Nepalese. As was discussed previously, farming is the heart and soul of many of the mountain villages of Nepal. As such, it is critically important for families to have strong, hard working children in them to labor on the farms, leading to economic advancement and the assurance of some level of continued income upon which to live. On a spiritual level, Nepalese women contend that the life of a child begins at conception, and as such, every child to be physically born already has earned the same rights to a happy life and protection as do all of the people who are born and members of society (Childs, 2004). Elaborate prayer rituals are conducted to protect the unborn, but very much alive and relevant baby from the powers of evil spirits. Within this ethical and economic framework, it is highly unusual for the Nepalese to terminate pregnancies as many Western civilizations, and even Nepal's neighbors such as China, do so with alarming regularity.

Modern Threats to Nepalese Culture

The Nepalese people, for all of their tradition and pride in their vastly unchanged ways, have also had to face threats from the modern world as well. One of the most obvious threats remains military aggression, primarily from China. Even in a passive society such as that of Nepal, there is always the possibility that the Chinese would flex their considerable military muscle and conquer Nepal, thereby causing irreparable harm to the land, culture, population and tradition of this fascinating nation. Outside influences also represent a substantial threat to Nepal in the form of illicit drugs. Like the United States, for example, Nepal experienced a surge in the number of "hippies" coming to Nepal in the 1960s in search of the peaceful lifestyle that they read about in books, experienced first hand through pop culture and saw in movies (Hitchcock, 1980). Along with the nomads came the use of drugs, ostensibly as a means of expanding one's mind and consciousness to open their eyes to the possibilities of all that existed in the world. The by-product of a demand for drugs, crime, poverty, violence and depravity, all took root in Nepal and still exist there today. The eradication of this threat to Nepalese culture must be a top priority.

Summary

This paper has presented and discussed the many elements of the mountain cultures of Nepal, as well as similar and divergent cultures worldwide. If nothing else, the conclusion of this paper should make the reader understand that advanced cultures are not always best, primitive cultures are not always bad, and the two share many commonalities. Cultures of all levels of development can peacefully coexist and contribute to one another, if only we will allow it to happen. Then, and only then, will true peace and harmony exist in the world.