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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic and auto-ethnographic work with pashmina-weaving households in Kashmir, this paper traces the collapse of a kinship-based mobility project oriented towards economic prosperity. It shows how, after failure, endurance and containment function as alternative modes of aspiration.

Paper long abstract

Anthropological research on aspiration and the ‘good life’ has often framed dreaming as an active endeavour oriented toward social mobility, well-being, and progress (Appadurai 2004; Fischer 2014; Hage 2009). In this paper, I build on this literature while arguing that, under conditions of structural inequality, aspirational labour often takes a different form: it is oriented less toward advancement and more toward containing a dream’s collapse.

In Kashmir, pashmina weaving is a centuries-old household-based industry in which families engage in weaving and trade; combining craft labour with kinship obligations and fluctuating export markets. Drawing on ethnographic and auto-ethnographic material from a pashmina-weaving household, I examine a kinship-based mobility project that emerged in the aftermath of India’s post-economic liberalisation. Structured around trade and aspirations for economic prosperity, this project collapsed following a major financial loss.

Taking this loss as a point of departure, the paper approaches capitalism not from corporations or financial centres, but from the households where its failures are lived, managed, and absorbed over time. I explore how people continue to orient themselves toward a ‘good life’ after failure, focusing on locally valued forms of stability, continuity, and social viability. Rather than treating aspiration as a driver of progress, I foreground containment as a crucial yet overlooked form of labour where endurance itself becomes a mode of aspiration and dreaming becomes more of an effort to sustain a livable present after the collapse of an anticipated future.