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The College of Wooster

Publication Date

Spring 2012

Program Name

Nepal: Development and Social Change

Abstract

The notion of a middle class is a recent phenomenon in the Kathmandu valley. With it comes the new category of adolescence, a period between basic education and marriage that now exists within Kathmandu’s social landscape. This new social category is defined by a moral struggle between modern and “traditional” values. The purpose of this research is to investigate how social identity is realized for members of Kathmandu’s heavy metal scene, a distinctly middle class adolescent phenomenon. Through interviews, quantitative surveys and participant observation this research deals with how “metal heads” define themselves as a social group that both stands apart from and intersects the malleable notion of “Nepali” culture.

Disciplines

Civic and Community Engagement | Family, Life Course, and Society | Politics and Social Change

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