Citation

Sato S. Jpn. J. Cult. Anthropol. 2007; 72(1): 95-117.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article attempts to illuminate a profile of the present state of a local community in a developing country by examining the way that it is constructed through a complicated intersection with so-called development discourse, that is, its engagements with the developed world. Specifically, an exploration is made of the contours of discourse by the Yolmos, a Tibetan-Buddhist people from the Yolmo region located northeast of Kathmandu, on the recently declined institution of "capture marriage." At present, capture marriage is a topic that Yolmos hardly dare mention (in front of outsiders, like the author). When they should be urged to do so (for example, by an intrigued anthropologist, such as the author), they talk of it negatively without fail - saying that it is not a commendable practice, that people did it because they were backward and did not understand what should be done or not be done, and that it is not practiced anymore and already belongs to their past as far as they are concerned, etc. This article's argument centers around the question of what, exactly, brings the Yolmos to come talk of capture marriage in that way - that is, it tries to delineate its discursive contents (the basis upon which they evaluate the practice) as well as its performative aspects (what the Yolmos try to do, and end up doing, in describing the custom in that way). At first glance, the Yolmos' discourse on capture marriage seems reminiscent of the evolutionist one in the 19th-century West, which positioned capture marriage as something "barbarous," in the far past of human progress. All the more, with their conspicuous employment of the term vikas (N.), a term widely used in Nepal for the English word "development," their narrative sounds like nothing other than a straight derivative from the modern Western discourse of progress, the heir of which in the latter 20th century is development discourse. But a closer look at those narratives show that they are two quite different things in their nature. Though Yolmos nowadays have adopted a progressive perspective in social change, regarding capture marriage as something from their past, the basis of that evaluation is not one upon which the Western perspective relies, presumably: that is, the diminution of violence against women or rise in respect for human rights of women. For Yolmos, the decline of capture marriage can be seen as part of the due course of development, and is thus worthy of admiration, not because it means greater respect for individual women's autonomy or a reduction in the violence against them. Instead, they believe it helps avoid such risks as social conflicts between families over the abducted woman, or any disturbances in their cosmic order of things that could be caused by the reckless actions of an angered abductee. Avoiding social conflicts between people and/or disturbances in the cosmic order can be seen as something always considered commendable in Yolmo society, even before development discourse was introduced (even if the reality did not always measure up to the ideals). It turned out that those local values actually form the bases of their negative evaluation of capture, now as well as in the past. Their version of development discourse is a hybrid construct which employs the :modern" conceptual framework of the general direction in social change (that is, progress) as well as their local values to distinguish the progressive/developed from the backward. Concerning the performative aspects of their speech acts, the paper argues that their talks achieve two rather conflicting effects simultaneously - constructing their modern progressiveness, while establishing their marginality or otherness in the West-centered world of the present. Basically, their acts of speaking in (a localized or hybridized version of ) development discourse can be considered to constitute the presentation and construction of themselves as "progressive" subjects, both individually or communally, adequately understanding and skillfully participating in the modern way of life. They represent their way of being as something developed enough to leave behind such a backward custom as capture marriage. Specifically, in a social context where those speech acts were actually persecuted (that is, in dialogue with the author, whom they recognize as a highly-educated person from the developed world), they can be seen as trying to bestow the impression that they are people who understand what development means. The seemingly flowing communication with the author also serves as "proof" of their being developed enough to be able to communicate adequately in a global development discourse. However, their talk, when seen in the context where they uttered them, actually cannot help but having a quite different effect from what they must have expected to achieve. Their utterances turn out neither agreeable nor developed "enough" for a person such as the author to appreciate them or feel any sympathy with them. They sound undeniably male-centered in their lack of consideration towards the position of the abducted woman, as well as "outdated" in the sense that they seem to naively believe in straightforward development or progress. Through the encounters between people from the developing world and the author from the developed world, the intractable positional differences between us loom rather large. Despite their efforts to let me understand them and my own efforts to understand them, our discursive engagements with each other illuminate even more clearly the presence of a subtle but not easily erasable gap, as well as an asymmetry, lying between the developed and developing worlds.

Language: ja