Sustainability and Social Justice

Land, Livestock, and Livelihoods: Changing Dynamics of Gender, Caste, and Ethnicity in a Nepalese Village

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, Ghusel VDC, Lalitpur District has moved from primarily subsistence agriculture into the wider cash economy aided by the Small Farmers' Development Program (SFDP), which provides credit to farmers mainly for the purchase of buffalo for milk production, and by the National Dairy Corporation, which supports local dairy cooperatives. Analysis reveals that buffalo-keeping and milk sales are increasing the well-being of many households, while at the same time creating new inequalities in gender roles and responsibilities, greater inequities between Brahmin and Tamang residents in Ghusel, and placing pressures on the ecosystem for increased supplies of fodder and fuelwood. Evidence suggests that there is critical, need for attention to the social, and particularly gender-based, implications of maintaining livestock for milk sales and to the ecological underpinnings of this livelihood system. © 1994 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

Publication Title

Human Ecology

Publication Date

12-1-1994

Volume

22

Issue

4

First Page

467

Last Page

494

ISSN

0300-7839

DOI

10.1007/BF02169389

Keywords

caste, Brahmins, ecology, forests, ethnicity, Tamang, gender, women, livestock, buffalo, Nepal, Middle Hills

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