On February 24, 2023, the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center was pleased to welcome Geoff Childs, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. alumnus of Indiana University’s Department of Central Eurasian Studies. Dr. Childs delivered a lecture titled “Having Crossed the River Do Not Forget the Bridge: Aging and Migration in Nubri, Nepal”. Childs’ talk focused on the effects of the rising rates of outmigration on aging and elder care practices in Nubri, an ethnically Tibetan area in the highlands of Nepal.
Childs has used a combination of demographic data and ethnographic fieldwork to show that, contrary to ideas of “successful aging” commonly accepted in American scholarship, elders in Nubri are more concerned with retiring from household labor and receiving support from younger family members than they are with independence and maintaining an active lifestyle. In fact, for an average elder in Nubri, the ideal retirement plan would be to retreat from household life altogether and spend the rest of their life generating merit through religious activity, all the while receiving financial support from their family. As Childs has shown, the increasing propensity for younger generations of Nubri Tibetans to leave their home area to find work or receive an education, along with increased longevity among the elders, have changed the character of aging and elder care in Nubri. As family support networks are stretched thin, elders are more likely to continue working in the household well into advanced age or seek care outside of the family, a trend that has led to the opening of the first retirement community in Nubri.
The lecture was followed by an informal lunch with CEUS graduate students. During the lunch, Dr. Childs shared his insights on getting published early in one’s academic career and reflected on the importance of the area studies training he had received at IU. The IAUNRC team was delighted to help make these events possible, and we hope to continue to sponsor events that promote the importance of studying the Inner Asian region and connect current students with distinguished CEUS alumni, contributing to Indiana University continued preeminence in the field of Central Eurasian Studies.