Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal

Document Abstract / Summary Overview

2003; Rose, 1994). Here, inequalities emerge through space as social and material meanings are co-produced. Difference is understood as an emergent process that must be continually renewed, challenging the idea of fixed identities (Gibson, 2001; Nagar, 2000). In this paper, I draw from work in Nepal to build from these insights to explore how the embodied performance of gender, caste and other aspects of social difference collapse the distinction between the material and the symbolic. In other words, symbolic ideas of difference are produced and expressed through embodied, spatial interactions that are firmly material (and thus socio-natural). Importantly, it is the symbolic meanings of particular spaces, practices and bodies that are (re)produced through everyday, embodied activities (e.g. agro-forestry, food consumption) and have profound consequences for ecological processes and social difference. Attention to everyday, seemingly mundane, spatial practices gives insight into how people produce a particular relationship with ‘others’ including their environments, that are rarely ecologically neutral. 2. Nepal, post-conflict and the production of subjectivities The recently concluded Maoist People’s War in Nepal and the 2006 revolution that precipitated the overthrow of the monarchy (Hutt, 2004; Thapa, 2004) have presented serious challenges to historically entrenched social and political hierarchies. [Note: this record was scraped from an archived (Wayback Machine) copy of the original site, which had stored the complete article text rather than just the abstract. It has been trimmed to an excerpt here; the full paper is available via the source link on this record.]