Embedding the Household in the Village

Abstract

Chapter 3 offers a fine-grained ethnographic analysis of one village’s use of economic and cultural practices to forge a tight-knit community from individual households. It begins by examining the household from the perspectives of anthropology and demography and then details how villagers employ secular and religious administrative systems to levy funds that support communal rites. The chapter concludes by linking men’s village-refined ritual skills with seasonal migration to cities, where they perform rites for urban Buddhist patrons and thereby establish social ties that facilitate educational migration for their children.