Kamzori: aging, care, and alienation in the post-pastoral Himalaya

Simpson, Nikita ORCID: 0000-0001-5260-3266 (2022) Kamzori: aging, care, and alienation in the post-pastoral Himalaya. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 36 (3). 391 - 411. ISSN 0745-5194

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Abstract

As the Gaddi community of Himalayan India transition from agro–pastoralism to waged labor, configurations of kinship and care have shifted. Such shifts have introduced relational tensions, especially between elderly women, who have labored in the house and fields, expecting care in old age, and younger generations, who experience their own pressures of class aspiration. This article examines how the myriad tensions of the post-pastoral economy are experienced in the bodies of elderly women. It presents insights on kamzori, bodily weakness that is experienced by women who feel that their contribution of labor and care is unreciprocated by their kin or wider milieu. It recuperates alienation as a concept that captures distressed social relations. Alienation might be used by anthropologists studying aging, care, and debility to envisage the body in scalar relation to people, things and places, and illness or distress as disruption of such relations. [weakness, aging, care, gender, alienation].

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journ...
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author
Divisions:	Anthropology
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Date Deposited:	13 Apr 2022 16:45
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 17:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/114898

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