Development workers' understanding of subsistence farmers' and herders' reluctance to adopt new technologies has been informed for several decades by a focus on the perception of risks and on patterns of diffusion of innovations. People living on the produce of their own land and herds have been described as "risk-averse" and culturally "conservative," and as preferring not to adopt new technologies and farming or husbandry methods that might negatively impact their ability to make it through the next dry or cold season. We have been living and working with agropas

No abstract

Nepalese agropastoralists' confrontations with forces of change in the last generation have altered villagers' abilities to gain access to health services, clean water, and nutrition in Humla District, Nepal. Development efforts and Nepal's recent armed conflict, in particular, introduced novel technologies and ideologies that a subsection of villagers have responded to in a fashion that we did not expect. In this article, based on theories about the diffusion of innovation and risk, we argue that, together, villagers and other change agents have cocreated new contexts of vulnerability in the postconflict setting of rural Nepal, as observed in remote Humla District. Using ArcGIS to represent landscapes of health and health-seeking behavior, we explore the integration of neoliberal health development in this postconflict setting in which medical pluralism, caste, Hinduism, and cultural conservatism all shape decision making. Based on in-depth and long-term research conducted in the region over the past 15 years, we describe the strengths and weaknesses of GIS as a tool for enhancing our understanding of this "health landscape." In Humla, topography is a major determinant of access to healthcare. Our analyses reveal interesting relationships among health, culture, and vulnerability and provide insight into directions for future health interventions in similar contexts elsewhere.

Neoliberal development processes are increasingly pervasive across the globe, but they are incorporated unevenly into social systems at the micro-level with varying ramifications for the sustainability of social institutions. This paper investigates how kinship relates to ecology and exposure to development in two villages of Humla District, Nepal. A geospatial analysis using ArcGIS software, combined with ethnographic techniques, offers visual representation of socio-ecological information that could facilitate the application of social scientific knowledge to a variety of issues in sustainable community development. The findings we present suggest that increasing integration with a market economy and other outside influences exaggerated differences in social networks. Specifically, we found that those villages with more development activity had more dispersed households and fewer social resources at home. This was in part the trade-off for increased connections abroad and in cities around Nepal. We explore the potential impacts of diffused social networks on long-term vulnerability. NGO staff working to maintain the sustainability of development's successes in the region will need to include the dynamics of local social networks in their analyses.

No abstract