ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ethno-graphic realities and issues of relationship in interspecies social dwelling, that tend to lose out to anthropocentric agendas of meaning and power. While there is no everyday linguistic category in Tamang for ‘animal’, domestic livestock are collectively dindu. The major sub-categories are spoken of in coupled terms mai—me (water buffalo—cattle) and ra—giu (goats—sheep). Yakpo (yak) and dzomo (female yak—cow hybrids) are kept mostly by specialized high-altitude herders. Agro-pastoral production has intensified since the mid-1980s, with women’s labour in particular increasingly devoted to fodder collection for water buffaloes, brought about through the effects of road development and tourism in creating selling opportunities for fresh milk and potatoes. Anthropologists are perhaps prone to pick upon the treatment of animals in their fieldwork communities to symbolize cultural difference. Social visiting is far easier than house-based negotiation of socio-architectural thresholds.
