‘It’s All About Education’: Middle-class, High-caste Women’s Aspirations of Choice, Freedom and Modernity in Urban Nepal

Bureaucratising Social Justice: The reproduction of social inequality through scholarship programs in Nepal

“…In the context of Nepal, a number of ethnographic studies have shed light on formal education as a key site for both reproducing and challenging inequality from the perspective of, among others, caste (Pfaff-Czarnecka, 2023;Skinner and Holland, 1996), class (Valentin, 2005;Wallenius, 2023), gender (Ahearn, 2001;Becker, 2021), and ethnicity and language (Pradhan, 2020;Weinberg, 2021). These studies reveal not just the differential reach of education but also the promises of social and economic progress ascribed to formal education in a context of historically institutionalized caste-based inequalities, a nation-building project tied to an all-pervading development ideology 2 (Fujikura, 2013;Valentin and Pradhan, 2023), and an expanding class-based consumer culture (Liecthy, 2003).…”

“…By prescribing requirements for remaining eligible after receiving a scholarship, scholarship programs engage students in both the possibilities and pitfalls of various aspirational logics linked to education. This rhetoric taps into students' hopes, dreams, and desires for a better future through the idea of schooling as a transformative space for individual and social change (Becker, 2021;Kölbel, 2013;Liechty, 2003;Valentin, 2005). While the dramatic expansion of formal schooling in Nepal since the mid-twentieth century has facilitated substantial sociocultural change and new opportunities for individuals, the very transformative potential presented by schooling has also elicited an emerging set of anxieties for students fearful of the potential pitfalls, setbacks, and failures of the formal educational process.…”