School of Social and Political Science

Description

What does it mean for Himalayan elders to navigate their later years in an era of unprecedented migration, shifting kinship structures, access to new technologies, transforming socioeconomic possibilities and constraints, and enduring commitments to Buddhist practice, particularly toward the end of life? How are family- and community-based caregiving obligations being met despite outmigration, particularly of younger people but also, increasingly, of elders themselves? This presentation emerges from a collaborative, comparative ethnographic research project about aging, care networks, and migration among culturally Tibetan communities whose homelands are in northern Nepal – specifically in Mustang and Gorkha districts. In this presentation, we focus on data from Mustang to explore the ways that elders who have relocated to urban environments articulate and maintain their affective ties to rural mountain homes even as they are no longer able to live there – or live there full-time. We consider the ways that daily routines to support physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing are reconceived through such relocations, what role access to health care and a desire to not be a “burden” on their children plays in decisions to leave the village, and how access to religious teachings and emotional connections with family members are maintained – or transformed – through such movements. We discuss the capacities of Mustangi elders to adapt to new environments, against the notion that aging is perforce bound up with nostalgia and a resistance to change. We also consider these issues against the reality that some elders do not leave the village – either by choice or due to increasing socioeconomic divides. In both cases, we examine the ways that a desire for independence and agency among elders is balanced with cultural understandings of interdependence, both as a Buddhist concept and as a lived reality of social networks that stretch from village to city and from Nepal to New York, and back again.