The Lure of the Exotic

Sometimes I try to see myself as some of you must see me. I try to explain my behavior the way some of you must…the way I in fact often explain the behavior of many friends who are far more adventurous than I, and this exercise often leaves me considering the term “exotic”. It is easy to believe that when people go off to live somewhere new or to learn about other people and other places, they have gone off in search of the exotic. We tell ourselves, they are looking for something new, exciting, perhaps even undiscovered in a place or a people we describe as exotic. We, as Americans, (or as Westerners as the literature would call us) have a strong sense of the exotic. There are the things we know; the shopping malls, the parking lots, the churches, the bowling alleys, and then somewhere, over there, there’s the exotic. Sometimes, that word calls to mind beaches and palm trees, but despite the images, for most of us, it has a much broader general meaning.

As anthropologists, we are trained to look more deeply at this type of “othering”, and called to ask ourselves and others what we’re really saying when we mark something as exotic. In a sense, it’s similar to the way some feminists deconstruct terms like “mankind” in order to find the unsaid or unacknowledged in those terms. And like the term “mankind”, exotic is in fact a very loaded word. When we claim something is exotic on a very basic level we mean something that is new and different. And yet, though I’ve never visited California, people would surely look askance at me if I described it as exotic upon arriving there. So at this point, let’s extend our definition to mean “not American” or better yet, “not European or American”, as I’m certain England generally doesn’t qualify as exotic either.



But let me throw a wrench in the works at this point, and ask about that little state of Hawaii. I think that many people would in fact describe Hawaii as exotic, particularly those who have yet to visit there. My first explanation of that description would go back to beaches, palm trees, and luscious weather, but I think that misses the mark. After all, there are plenty of dreamy vacation spots on the US mainland. So exotic can’t simply mean nice place to visit. But the answer does lie once again in our shared imagination of Hawaii. Hawaii is not just a place of beaches, and palm trees, and it’s not just a place that, at least in our minds, is free from strip malls and traffic jams. It is also the home of grass skirts. Of course, grass skirts are in and of themselves, really just a symbol of a whole slew of other cultural practices; dances, food, language, ect, but they are a potent symbol indeed. In one simple skirt, mainland Americans are able to contain the entire Hawaiian archipelago. And more to the point for this discussion, by recognizing that skirt as “exotic”, they label all of the islands of Hawaii and all of their inhabitants as exotic as well.

So now what do we mean when we say “exotic”? I think in some senses, we mean “tribal” or perhaps, “uncivilized”. And now the problem with the term, the hidden negativity, comes to light. Though I’ll allow a certain amount of glamour to the term exotic, in that it tends to carry with it some admiration of what we imagine to be a freer and more spiritual way of “tribal” life, I think above all else, “exotic” is really an unconscious judgment call based on a hierarchy of civilization that is firmly biased towards the “West”. Exotic is the word we use when we want to describe the pull of the “primitive” on civilized beings like ourselves. And in doing so, we place ourselves above those exotic peoples and places which we know little or nothing about, but which we imagine ourselves to understand quite well.

But why this long rant on a particular word? Nepal, for me, has never been exotic. I’ve never looked at it with the romanticism or criticism necessary to apply that term. But yet, today, for a moment, I caught myself mentally criticizing another’s adventure for its lack of exoticism as if exoticism were a necessary ingredient of all good adventures. In that moment, I bought into the stories I’d been told, and I relied on the symbols I’d been given by American culture without thinking. And so, as an act of atonement, and an exercise in careful critical thinking, I’ve written this small piece. I decided to share it with all of you because I know that at least a few of you will never cease to believe that it is not a yearning to experience the exotic that has brought me here. I doubt this post will be enough to convince you otherwise, but all the same, I challenge you to think about your preconceptions about Nepal, about Hawaii, and about any other place that strikes you as different enough to be exotic. At the very least, I challenge you to use the word, the image, and the symbol cautiously. Perhaps, you may find yourself, as I did, discovering more about yourself and the way you see the world, than you will about an exotic other.

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Dear all,

I've got lots of exciting stories to send you from the field, so I'm going to break them up and post them over the next few days, including the story explaining why I've returned to Kathmandu so early. I'm sorry that it's been so long since I've posted, emailed, ect, but I have absolutely no internet access in the field, so I hope you'll all forgive me.

For me, the most exciting thing from the field was the amazing work I was able to get done. While I've been laboring away in Kathmandu as diligently as I can, I easily accomplished just as much work in one day in the field as I would have in a whole month in Kathmandu. Of course, that's largely because my timing was just right for this trip. I arrived shortly after a wedding which the whole village was still buzzing about and several women were just begin to weave new bonas (the traditional womens' garment of the Dhimals, the community that I work with) to replace those they'd given as gifts. So while I haven't gotten any hands on experience to date, I was able to observe all but one minor step of the weaving process and while there's still a lot of deeper digging to be done, the technical aspects of my project are coming along much more quickly than I had expected. Which means, I'm one happy anthropologist!!

While I spent a good deal of time in the field, most of the work was concentrated in a short two day period where I was able to sit with one woman for most of the process. To my delight, even though weaving is a long and labor intensive process that largely can be done by a single woman, it seems to provide a good excuse to gossip and many men and women came to visit us at the loom and chat. I can tell already these sessions at the loom are going to teach me about a lot more than just the technicalities of weaving, and I'm very excited to spend more time sitting with the women in several of the communities and waiting to see what else I can learn.

I'm going to post a picture or two of the weaving process in the slideshow, and I'll post again soon about some of the more fun and interesting things about my time in the field, but now it's getting late! I love and miss you all and I hope you all had wonderful holidays!



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Book Review: The Will To Improve

Dear all,

I’ve just finished a fantastic book, and in order to keep my writing skills sharp, I’ve decided to write a review for you all. For those of you who are not anthropologically inclined, parts of the review may seem very boring or technical, and for that I do apologize. Still, I encourage you to read it (or at least to skip to the end) because the book has left me with some big questions and as always, I’m dying to hear what your thoughts are. (What can I say? I’m addicted to the opinions of the many brilliant folk I’m fortunate enough to know. Can you really blame me?) So, on to the review!




The Will To Improve
Governmentality, Development , and the Practice of Politics
By Tania Murray Li
Published by Duke University Press, 2007

As the subtitle states, Ms. Murray Li’s work focuses on the immense realms of Governmentality, Development and Politics, taking as her specific focus several communities located in the Central Sulawesi Highlands in Indonesia. Her work begins with a discussion of the concept of Governmentality, which she grounds very firmly in Foucalt’s theories. While Murray Li devotes a great deal of technical discussion to this term, (a choice I will discuss in more detail below), I feel a basic concept would have sufficed for her discussion, and would have made this work more accessible to a broader audience. Very simply, following Foucalt, Murray Li holds that government is concerned with ensuring that the behavior of its subjects conforms to a “right” way of doing things which will lead to a very specific set of goals. The sum of these goals, is a utopian or “good” society in which the government needs only to provide minimal direction (as opposed to continuos direct intervention). She goes on to point out that this definition of government also applies to the way most development programs function, and thus labels development programs as functioning under an idea of Governmentality. (Murray Li, pg 5-6)

With these concepts in place, she goes on to discuss the history of development in her fieldsites from both official government bodies and development programs. As she describes it, Murray Li’s fieldsite is made up of several distinct communities, all of whom are currently plagued by problems of landlessness, poverty, and inter-community conflict. According to Murray Li, the Central Sulawesi Highlands have also been the sites of countless development and improvement projects for over 200 years. As the discussion of this history unfolds, several trends begin to emerge.

The first trend Murray Li elucidates is the way in which different programs overlap and intersect, producing unexpected and often, negative consequences for the very communities these programs were designed to help. The most striking example of this is related to the history of relocation of certain communities and the effect on livelihoods and perceptions of indigineity that resulted. Murray Li explains that in the earliest phases of development, the Dutch government resettled villagers from the highlands to the lower hills, in order to bring them closer to infrastructure benefits (like roads) and to enable them to take advantage of new agricultural techniques which were more economically beneficial, techniques like cacao farming. But resettlement proved difficult, for a host of reasons, ranging from insufficient land to epidemics caused by the villagers’ lack of immunity to the strains of diseases found in their new home. However, the government continued the practice of resettlement in the face of these challenges, right up until a new concern emerged, bio-conservation. As bio-conservation became a national agenda item, and international donors pressured for the creation of a protected national park, the government and development institutions began new programs. Eventually, a park was established, after which villagers were denied access to the land they had originally been relocated to, instructed not to practice the farming techniques that were previously encouraged (as they were deemed environmentally unfriendly), and often denied the status of indigenous people because they had not occupied an ancestral homeland from time immemorial (a major condition of indigineity in development definitions of the term). Yet despite the fact that many of the conditions the new development agenda sought to correct were in fact created by previous development initiatives, the new development agenda stated firmly and repeatedly, that it was the behavior and practices of the villagers which needed to be rectified. The resulting hardships for villagers, including an increase in landlessness and poverty, continue even today.

The second trend, which was of particular interest to me, was the way in which development discourses defined and reshaped the structure of communities. Repeatedly, development agendas took the stance that a “traditional” community structure existed within these villages, which would be conducive to the goals of development programs, but which needed to be guided or perfected by outside “experts”. Not only did this supposition rest on some very outdated ideas of “traditional villages”, many of which can be directly traced back to old ideas about the “Noble Savage”, but they also neglected the agency of the villagers. The programmers assumed that the villagers would use the new skills and ideas provided them in exactly the way the developmental institutions had intended them to, which rarely proved to be the case. This point was most clearly demonstrated in the section, “The Case of Katu”. (pg 145). This section discusses how a particular community facing eviction from their land in order to facilitate the creation of the State Park used their new understandings and abilities to successfully lobby against eviction. The Katu community used their knowledge of NGOs and development discourse to enlist the help of a non-park affiliated NGO to produce a variety of documents providing technical information on the sustainability of their farming techniques, documenting their history in that particular area, and even producing GPS maps detailing the land they were currently occupying. Rather than recognize the agency and legitimacy of the Katu community’s activities, even as they had conformed to the technical processes of development, the pro-park NGOs and governmental organizations assumed the Katu had been manipulated and encised by outside sources. In the end, the Katu were allowed to remain in the park on the grounds that they had sufficiently proved themselves to be indigenous, but other communities were not afforded similar treatment.

I found the work to be enormously insightful and the critiques of development to be particularly enlightening, however, I should acknowledge my own previous bias in this regard. As I find myself continually surrounded by the hundreds of development projects and agendas here in Nepal, I have struggled with an uneasiness with the entire process, and in many ways, I felt as though this work pointed concretely to ideas I’d only begun to flesh out. Murray Li dedicates a large portion of the book to discussing the most basic premise of development, what she terms the trustee - ward relationship. She describes this relationship in this way, “The will to empower others hinges upon positioning oneself as an expert with the power to diagnose and correct a deficit of power in someone else.” (pg 275) Personally, I find this position to be untenable. As Murray Li points out, life is messy and complicated, and even should one attain a level of expertise in a particular area, it would take a lifetime of study to be an expert in all of the relevant fields for even the most basic of development programs. From her research, Murray Li points repeatedly to specific real life examples of how development programs create numerous difficulties and conflicts at the same time they work to rectify others.

However, I do have two critiques of the work. Though I found the work to be a strong academic piece, I felt it lacked ethnographic richness. The communities Murray Li worked with were portrayed as largely homogeneous groups rather than a defined set of individuals, and her sparse use of quotes and individual narratives made the communities seem voiceless in the work overall. Murray Li also neglected to discuss her own positioning within the communities in which she worked, and it was unclear how her own biases and positioning affected the information she collected. Lastly, I was irked by the style of her writing, as she often began and ended chapters with dry lists of what was or would be discussed. Overall, I felt these defects made her work less accessible to a larger audience, which is a great loss considering the importance and validity of many of her critiques. I was also left feeling a bit concerned, because though she had stressed again and again the importance of recognizing agency in these communities, the lack of strong ethnographic writing made the work seem as though once again, these communities were being spoken for by an expert outsider.

But let’s move away from this academic discussion for a minute, so that I can share with you all some of the questions that this book left me with. As I mentioned above, here in Nepal, development seems to be everywhere. In fact, I’ve even done some low-level work on a development project since I’ve arrived, and I foresee requests to do more. But development programs leave me feeling awfully queasy. As the book points out, ideas about the need for development are stubborn in the face of failure. There is a general sense of “yes, the system is flawed, but we can’t just give up.” And it would be difficult to argue that these programs are anything but benevolent in their overall aims. But I’m still left wondering, how can the many sad and injustice circumstances in the world be improved, and who really ought to make the necessary changes? As an anthropologist, I’m firmly opposed to the idea that an individual from one community has the right, or even the necessary knowledge, to tell another community how they ought to live or behave. But as a human being, I feel that we all have the responsibility to help each other and make the world a better place. As of this moment, I’ve come up with no solid answers. For the time being, I simply watch uneasily as my friends and colleagues pursue their various agendas.

Another major challenge I’m facing right now, is how to make sense of differences and perceived “inequalities” without constantly relying on value statements. As I travel back and forth between villages and Kathmandu, and eventually, the US, the people I meet are eager to characterize certain settings as “advanced”, “forward”, or even “good”, while others are “backward”, “not nice”, ect. And while I try to shy away from these types of judgements in my own thinking, sometimes it’s very difficult. There have been times when I’ve tried to convince a villager that I find their community to be very nice, but at the very same time, I’m lamenting the loss of my laptop, or counting the days until my next hot shower. At one point in time, I was anxious to convince my friends in the villages that their way of life was just as good as life in the city, with all its amenities. But even that line of thinking has it’s downfall, as it effectively freezes them in their current way of life, and denies them access to commodities, comforts and ideas which may be highly desirable to them. So how can I fairly balance an appreciation for village life with an appreciation for their right to want something else, and at the same time, remain sensitive to the fact that many villagers have internalized the idea that “village life is bad and city life is good”, an idea ushered in by so many well meaning development workers?

Sigh, well at least my work continues to make my brain tickle, even if I can’t answer every question I ask. It’s just one of the many joys of anthropology I suppose! :)

Love you all!



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Fieldsite Pics

Hi all,

Just wanted to draw attention to the fact that I've changed one of the slideshow boxes to show pictures from my first trip to the field. Sadly, my camera's photos are still MIA, but Dai was generous enough to give me these from his camera so that I could give you guys a better sense of what I was talking about in the last post. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

All my love..and a few of my hugs too!
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My Fieldsite!!

As promised, though long over due, here’s my post about my fieldsite. You can thank (or blame as you see fit) an amazing cup of tea and Ella Fitzgerald for finally motivating me to write this. I discovered a bottle of vanilla in the kitchen this afternoon and the whole world seems different now! I'm not sure where on earth it came from, because all the packaging is in english, but I hardly care because now my tea is extra delicious!

As some of you have heard, my camera has tragically eaten all of my pictures from my first field visit. My super awesome little brother is going to try and recover them, but in the meantime, you’ll just have to rely on my picturesque writing.

During my first trip to the field, I visited several different villages, just so that I could get a sense of the landscape and because it hadn’t be determined exactly where I’ll be staying yet. In fact, my future home away from home away from home is still not set in stone, but things are looking pretty solid with one particular family. But only time will tell where I eventually end up.

In any case, I was excited to find that each village we stopped in had a unique flavor all of it's own. My fieldsite is located in the district of Jhapa, largely within the city of Damak. Jhapa is pretty far south and at one point on the bus ride home I could look out the window and into India. The landscape is absolutely beautiful, but it's also very foreign seeming to a Northern girl like me. You can generally still see the hills in the distance, but gone are the green decidious trees. Instead, palm trees sprout up here and there, and vast fields cut by irrigation canals dominate the view. There arn't nearly as many cows as there are here in Kathmandu, but there are more than enough buffalo and oxen to make up for them.



When I'm in the field, it feels as though the heat will never relent, but by evening, it's generally beautiful. Unfortunately, the heat is very conducive to creepy crawlies, and in addition to some of the largest insects I've ever seen in my life, snakes are fairly common here. In fact, just after we'd left one of the villages a small child had to be rushed to the treatment clinic for a snake bite. (Which prompted me to buy a new pair of shoes despite my preference for sandals) But before you worry too much, the little one made a full recovery and at least for snake bites the treatment clinic is excellently prepared.

In terms of the vista, my favorite part of the field is the houses. There are two styles of houses that predominate in the area. The one I find to be most practical and comfortable is generally built of wood with either a straw or tin roof. The house has two stories, and the second story has a large porch where you can sit and write, or take meals in the evening. The other house style is generally made of clay, again with a thatched roof, but only with one story. Most homes generally have additional buildings, and in the villages where I'm working, many of the homes have a seperate building for the kitchen. The kitchen holds a lot of religious significance for the Dhimal community, but I've only just begun to explore that area.

Of course, all of this means nothing to me when compared with the people I'm so fortunate enough to be working with. I'd been careful when choosing a group to work with because I wanted to find a community that would find my work to be useful and meaningful, but that still didn't prepare me for the warm reception I've recieved at every turn. Everyone I met was excited and curious about me, and everyone seemed eager to help me however they could. However, looking back on it now, I can't fight a sense of sadness at the way that some of them reacted to me. They were all so kind and warm, but at the same time, there was often an un-necessary sense of embarrasment that hurt me very deeply. The discourse of development and modernity is well known here, and people are well aware that their homes lack the comforts of the big city. I tried to explain that I found value in the way they were living as well, but many seem to have internalized the critiques of the "modern" world, and the warnings of countless NGO workers so thoroughly that it was impossible for them to consider my compliments as anything other than mere politeness.

But I suppose even this is a hidden blessing, because it's really challenged me to look at the way I value life styles, and in particular the human comforts I've grown so accostumed to. Sometimes, as I'm assuring someone that I don't mind using their outhouse or sharing a bed with a stranger, I had to stop and ask myself if I really didn't mind. And I've found that while I may occasionally be peeved at the lack of this or that amenity, after just a day or two, I seem to adjust and life goes on pretty much as it always has for me. I think that rather than saying that life is better or worse in the city or in the village, I really feel that it's just different.

Of course, that's not to say that right now I'm not more comfortable in Kathmandu. After all, my friends are here, and I don't really have a home in the village yet. But I think that once I've really found my place, and mastered some of the basic skills I currently lack (like bathing at the water tap), I'll be just as happy there as I am here.

Alright, I know I probably could have written a ton more, and I'll try to fill in the gaps as time goes on, but I think this is still a pretty good introduction. That said, if you have questions, please please ask..I never know exactly what you guys will find most interesting!

But it's quickly getting late here and I've got to work tomorrow evening, so I really ought to be off. All my love!!!

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And this is my job

Hi all,

I'm really only writing tonight to brag a little bit, so please try not to get too annoyed with me. Anyway, yesterday and today were both pretty great days. Yesterday, some relatives of my family were kind enough to allow me to attend their daughter's engagement party. It was really interesting to see how engagements happen in Nepal, but it was also a ton of fun to celebrate with the happy family. There are a few pictures up in one of the slideshow boxes, if you're interested.

This morning, I also got to go on a mini adventure. I walked all the way from Jorpati to Kopan Monastery and back, a 9 mile walk one way. Even more impressive, Kopan is at the top of what we would call a mountain. My dhimal teacher tried to convince me it was only a small hill, but once I get the pictures up you'll see why I refused to believe him. Anyway, it was well worth the trek because the monastery was gorgeous.


My guide for the trip was my dhimal teacher's high school aged daughter and it was so much fun talking with her as we went along. She is such a sweetheart and like any teenage girl, she loves to talk. I'm pretty sure I know everything about her school, and her friends, and her friends' friends now. The best part is that's exactly the kind of think I get paid to do. I feel so lucky to not only have the opportunity to spend time here in Nepal, but also to be able to be doing the kind of work I'm doing. I can't think of any better job in the world. (Please feel free to remind me of this when I'm writing and complaining constantly!)Of course, I would never write up notes on anything that my young friend told me today, because she's underage and I would consider it to be unethical, but even so, it helps to get perspective on some of the things that her elders have been telling me and really gave me an opportunity to think about other questions I might ask other Dhimal about their childhoods and their schooling.

It was also a great chance for me to work on the ways in which I relate to people during "interviews". It was fun, (personally) and useful (professionally) to see which of my stories she related to, and what things I could commiserate with her about. Now, I just have to find a way to get more mature women to be as friendly and open with me as their children are! Anyway, looking back on it, it was an interesting interaction for a lot of reasons. At one point, I remember smiling to myself because I was thinking how funny it was that I was feeling like my best friend here in Nepal is only 13 years old, and yet at another point, I was analyzing each question I asked and carefully monitoring the responses. (But before any of you worry, I've finally managed to make two good friends here, so I'm not actually bff with a freshman, and the friendlessness that some of you heard me complain about is officially passed.)

Anyway, I could say more but it appears as though my legs just realized how much work they've done today, and they are starting to protest, so I should do my homework and crawl (probably literally) in to bed! Goodnight all. As always, I'm sending my love!!
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"I love you, Beta" (or why kinship terms are the magic beans of life's beanstalk)

So I've been promising (or threatening, depending on where you're standing) for sometime to write about my deep love of kinship terms. I'm thankful I postponed, as the last few days have given me more time to reflect and add to my thoughts on this. I'd be curious to hear what other's have to say on this topic, so please feel free to add your two sense. :)

I'd been thinking about my ideas on kinship terms for several days when my phone rang and to my surprise, my dad was on the other end. My dad and I are much more successful at communicating in person, so phone calls are pretty rare, but he told me that he was with someone who wanted to say hello. After a moment's pause, a voice came on the phone, "Hello beta (daughter in Hindi)". I felt my face explode in to a smile as I joyfully responded "Auntie!" Anyone who knows me in the "real world" will know, Auntie is not really my aunt. Well, not in the sense that she is a sibling or sibling in law of either of my parents. She, like many of the people I call family, was once a stranger whom I'd met through someone else I know, usually because there was some idea that they could help prepare me for life in Nepal. But over time, something magical has happened to many of these relationships. The ensuing phone conversation with Auntie is testament to this magic. It went a little something like this:

Auntie:"Beta, I am so proud of you for Fulbright. This is such a good thing."

Me: "Thank you Auntie, I'm excited too. But I've been so busy getting ready. I'm sorry I haven't come to see you. And I was worried that you would be busy too, so I didn't want to bother you."

Auntie: "We always make time for our daughters. Come for dinner and eat with your uncle and I. Come soon."

Me: "Of course Auntie. I will come very soon."

And this is the best part, partly because I could tell from her voice it had slipped out, probably a habit from years of saying the same thing to her natural born daughter, but partly because I knew she meant it all the same.

Auntie: "I love you, beta."

Me: "I love you too Auntie. Tell uncle I said hello."

If you're observant, the above conversation reveals a very complex relationship. Auntie and I have no generally recognized kin connections. I refer to her by a term that indicates that she is a sibling of one of my parents, but she refers to me as one of her own offspring. Even more interestingly, Auntie and I have only shared a handful of afternoons together. But the way we feel about each other and the rules that govern how we interact are very real. This is the magic of kinship terms.

When Auntie and I first met, she was kind and welcoming to me, but I felt a formality in the way she treated me. After all, I was the daughter of her boss, and I had come to observe, in the role of an interested student, a Hindu ritual in her home. She invited me to come again, but even in our second meeting I was not completely at ease. Fortunately, I had some ideas of what was expected of a young lady in Indian culture and I knew that I was well received by both Auntie and her husband. But it wasn't until my third visit, when I was going to be attending a traditional Hindu wedding with Auntie and Uncle that our relationship became what it now is. Auntie was picking out one of her daughter's old lungi (an Indian dress) for me to wear to the wedding. I innocently (though not really) asked her what I should call her at the wedding in front of her friends. After awhile, we decide on Auntie and ever after, we've been family. Of course, I'm not entirely unaware of fostering these relationships. I'm always careful to behave appropriately to the roles we've decided on. But I still believe that these words we are using to describe each other have a huge impact on the way our relationships develop. When I went to fetch Uncle's tea, it could have been interpreted as a polite gesture, but instead, it was proof that I was a good daughter. I'm still not certain if these terms are powerful only when the expectations they convey are met, or if the terms themselves are just so emotionally loaded, it's difficult for us to disjoin the emotion from the relationship the words typically describe. I am certain however that calling someone by a kinship term is a surefire way to develop a powerful and lasting bond with virtually anyone. If you need more evidence of this, just look at the ritual friendship/brotherhoods (meetini in nepali) relationships. (I could write more on this point, but I won't simply because I've more rambling to do.)In any case, it seems to me that kinship terms and not actual kinship is what creates families.

But as much as I truly love all the people I call family, I can't help but be reminded that some of this status is fictional. Usually, these reminders come from outsiders who comment with curiosity on my "family" photos or who know my natal family and are certain my mother didn't have several previously unknown daughters. I've just finished re- re- reading Love and Honor in the Himalayas, and the author, Ernestine, talks about how unkindly a stranger in Nepal once reminded her that "...it was wrong, and I [Ernestine} was wrong, and that what I was engaging in was a masquerade to which I had no right. I was not going to stay there. I was not going to marry there. I was not going to suffer there."(McHugh, 117) Ernestine's reaction to this was one of dismay, but I feel differently. I personally feel that the use of kinship terms and the subsequent creation of relationships allows me to open myself up to people in ways that would otherwise be socially unacceptable, but also emotionally unwise. My "fictional" kin relationships have merely provided me the safety net needed to get to know people that I would love no matter how I came to know them. I fully recognize that I am a guest in the lives of those that call me little sister, daughter or niece, but my temporary status does not make my position in anyone's lives any less genuine.

There's also another important view point to consider here. As I prepare to leave for my ten or more months in Nepal, I've had to do a lot of thinking about the life I will leave behind. I've been blessed by a life more full of love than anyone could ever hope to have and I'm painfully aware of all the people whose lives will go on without me very very soon. And it makes me realize, we are all guests in the lives of those around us.

Case in point, I regularly read Janice's blog (check it out here: http://www.jkosmandu.blogspot.com/) and her most recent post stands in stark contrast to her others. Janice's post are generally filled with pictures and stories that while seemingly exotic to those of us living in the states, are clearly Janice's everyday existence. Ironically, the pictures in her last post seem the most exotic of all, so much so that I checked to make sure I was at the right page when they opened. The pictures show two teenage girls in their prom dresses and Janice tells us about her two nieces preparing for prom and graduation here in the states, without her. While genetics and a greater cultural law describe these two girls as her "real" family, I wonder whether anyone could really argue that these relationships, which have been put on hold while Janice completes her work on the other side of the world, play a more significant role in Janice's life than the friends and "family" she is currently sharing every moment of her life with. Even when she returns, are those relationships really any more lasting or permanent that the ones she'll have left in Nepal? In my opinion the answer is clearly no. While our past and our future help to shape and influence who we are, identity is very much created and understood in the moment. Read more on ""I love you, Beta" (or why kinship terms are the magic beans of life's beanstalk)"!

My Mission Statement (aka why I'm an anthropologist)

So I was thinking today about why I do what I do, and to some extent doubting my ability to do it. Lately, I've found myself watching the many different researchers that surround me in my daily life and, at least in my own eyes, finding myself to be vastly different from most of them. I watch as some of them succumb to seemingly random bouts of genius, while others ferociously gobble up every ounce of knowledge that comes within their reach. I exhibit neither of these behaviors. In fact, despite my sincerest desires to do so, I find that I do very little of the actual work I set out to do. So this led me to the frightening idea, that perhaps, I am not really cut out for this line of work. After all, I spend 90% of my time socializing on one level or another, and the other 10% of my time planning more socializing. So I had to ask myself, "Why am I doing this?"

I tried to answer the question the way I would if one of the Dhimali women I'll be working with in Nepal had asked me. And here's the answer I got. I do this because I am selfish. I want my life to be filled with beautiful things and lived in the most beautiful way it can be. But to do that, I have to find all those beautiful things. I don't feel that I can assume that just because I've done something one way all my life, it's the only way to do things or even the best way to do them. So I set out to learn what I'm doing right and what I could be doing better. And so far it's worked. Before I visited Nepal, I prayed in one way, and it was a good way and I still value it. But now I see there are so many amazing ways to worship god, life, love, whatever you want to call it and I can't imagine how I ever thought I could appreciate or understand a greater power from a single point of view. And before I became part of a Nepali family, I never understood the power that words like sister, brother, mother, and father could mean. Now those simple terms are almost magical to me, because I understand they can create, out of nothing more than sound and breathe, a lifetime of comfort, friendship, and love.

And while my reason for doing this is about as selfish as motives can get, I do hope that some good can come of what I do. I hope that in the end, the people I work with will look at what I've said about them and see the beauty that they've taken for granted in their lives, as they've taught me to see things differently in my own. And I hope that those who later read my work can discover, as I have, that human beings, in all our diversity, are just as beautiful as sunrises over mountain streams, butterflies on newly opened buds, or the golden patterns woven in to sari silk by a skilled hand.

Now that I can look back at my mission statement, I'm certain that I was meant to be nothing other than what I am. I may not be the most studious of anthropologists, and unsurprisingly, I do spend an enormous amount of time being with people that I love until it hurts, but I hope that in the end that's what will make my work stand out. I have every intention of falling in love in Nepal with the people that I meet and the many ways they fill their lives, and mine, with wonderful, amazing things, and I think that's something that the academic community is just going to have to make room for. Read more on "My Mission Statement (aka why I'm an anthropologist)"!