Marriage and the constitution of hierarchy and gender in Bahun-Chetri households

The author begins with a mild 'deconstruction' of the title of Collier's book Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies (1988). The author assumes that the 'unsaid' of the term 'classless' describes societies in which social relations are characterised by equality, whether normatively or praxically defined. Further, the term classless immediately suggests a marxist perspective which locates the origin of equality in the mode of production. As a result, the title proposes it is a marriage that introduces inequality into societies which are, in terms of economic infrastructure, fundamentally egalitarian. In this paper, the author takes up one implication of this deconstruction - that marriage transforms equality into inequality - but do so with respect to Brahmin-Chhetri society in Nepal, a society that is fundamentally hierarchical.