The cultural politics of markets: Economic liberalization and the challenge for social planning in Nepal

This dissertation considers the potential for politically progressive responses within the state to the contemporary neoliberal orthodoxy and related processes of economic globalization. It focuses specifically on recent initiatives in Nepal to temper the pace of economic liberalization with financial regulations promoting the so-called "microcredit" model of rural finance. In order to evaluate the potential of this model to provide social opportunities for its target population of poor rural women, the dissertation first considers the configuration of interests underlying the simultaneous engendering and marketization of development embedded in this strategy, as well as the key assumptions within it about the causes of poverty, the role of markets, and the nature of community. The bulk of the dissertation is then devoted to bringing ethnographic analysis of a local cultural economy (the Newar merchant community of Sankhu) to bear on these assumptions, with special emphasis on the perspectives of low castes and women and on the articulation of macroeconomic trends with local cultural contexts. The emphasis on subaltern perspectives is intended ultimately to illuminate the resources for social criticism available within culture and to demonstrate how planners might learn to recognize them.