Dhriti’s Story

Notes on the condition of the elderly in poorer households in Nepal between uncommonness and the negatively commoned

Abstract

These fieldnotes focus on the case study of 68-year-old Dhriti, whom I met in Nepal during fieldwork in 2018-2019. This story invites reflection on the condition of poorer households – which in most cases still nowadays belong to families of lower caste backgrounds in the context of urban Nepal today. Despite the abolishment of the caste system in 1963 and its criminalisation in 2011, caste-related disparities and discrimination are still a reality, where centuries of socio-economic disadvantage still persist in cycles of injustice. If ‘commoning’ is the collective practice of creating and sustaining shared resources to meet common needs and well-being, a situation such as that of Dhriti's household shows a case of what I shall call ‘uncommonness’ in a domestic space, where a communal project of well-being seems unattainable in the face of limited resources, and in the context of broader social stratifications. The struggles of ageing among the poor in Nepal also point to ongoing practices of elderly mistreatment, which could make us think of ‘negatively commoned’ social spaces, where certain (often vulnerable) groups become the recipients of negative treatments that become socially accepted.