Paper short abstract:

Food values and viable subsistence in northern Nepal show Tamang idioms and aesthetics of domestic aspiration and insufficiency engaging effects of labour migration in aesthetic and rhetorical transformations fashioned as fullnesses, depletions, and suitabilities.

Paper long abstract:

The effects of migrant labour flows out of the village subsistence economy have required adjustments in the daily task-scape of livelihoods, and the values accorded to animals and foods. This paper considers a case from north central Nepal where Tamang cropping systems and livestock movements show substantial changes from two decades ago. The moral economy of food production is undergoing ergonomic as well as aesthetic tensions and innovations. Clearly the rapidity of information flow enabled by mobile phones transforms the domestic network into a de-centred assemblage, and the role of remittances in sustaining food production by negotiated values, debts and reciprocities, calls for analysis of comings and goings of greater rapidity through the mutual dealings of householders, their kin and neighbours. The paper will review a set of observations about food values and viable subsistence in Tamang idioms and aesthetics of domestic aspiration and insufficiency, which include dressed-up performances for ritual house-cleansing, and innovations in house design. It will set these observations in a theoretical context in which livelihoods are presented as increasingly dependent on international labour migration without fully appreciating the subjective and expressive dimensions in which such transformations can be aesthetically and rhetorically fashioned as fullnesses, depletions, and suitabilities.