Bureaucratising Social Justice: The reproduction of social inequality through scholarship programs in Nepal

Abstract

This article draws on ethnographic data on the distribution of scholarship programs at two Nepali state-run schools. Anchored in the cross-field of educational anthropology and the anthropology of bureaucracy, this article examines schools not just as sites of learning but as institutions that control and regulate access through bureaucratized mechanisms. We draw attention to scholarship processes as inherently selective and requiring social and cultural capital, thus leading to what we term “the bureaucratization of social justice.”