Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on a moral economy approach to examine themes of verticality, visibility and values. The development of infrastructures related to the growth of the Everest tourist industry contributes to a double bind: the incompatibility of economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Paper long abstract:

The Nepali state government and private telecommunications corporations have made a committed effort to increase digital connectivity in the largely remote and underdeveloped Solukhumbu (Everest) region in the wake of the earthquake and avalanches in in 2014 and 2015. Newly implemented digital infrastructure has coincided with an increase in the number of tourists arriving in the region, and improvements in tourist infrastructures (accommodation, amenities and services) have followed.

This paper draws on a moral economy approach to examine themes of verticality, visibility and values. The paper argues that the development of digital and other infrastructures related to the growth of the tourist industry in the Solukhumbu contributes to a double bind: a situation of “can’t win”, or the incompatibility of economic growth and environmental sustainability. Through my ongoing fieldwork, I investigate changes, continuities and contradictions in moral reasonings related to infrastructures over time. In the Solukhumbu, such commitments are needed to address challenges posed to livelihoods and the impacts of climate change.

The moral economy of infrastructuring (the ways that infrastructures are subject to stop and start processes, rather than emerging through linear processes) reveals how infrastructuring become a symbolic reflection of anxieties of the cultural order and consequently, the sense of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate that regional populations adhere to while trying to navigate economic aspirations alongside environmental conservation.