Young Ladakhis experience markedly different childhoods from those of their parents and previous generations. In this rural region of the western Himalayas, a transition has occurred since the 1990s wherein education is now widely supported among Ladakhis as a priority for children, and economic provisions from the government and NGOs make school accessible. While financial returns on education are not guaranteed due to slow job growth, being educated has become a valued social marker that is important for full personhood. This dissertation explores what is at stake for Ladakh young people in light of significant socioeconomic transformations. Data derive from ethnographic research with pre-teens, teenagers, and parents of school-age children, carried out over ten months between 2011 and 2014 in villages and towns of Leh District, Jammu and Kashmir state, India. Because many Ladakhi parents received only primary schooling or none at all, the responsibility for learning and academic achievement falls on children, with parents perceiving that they have very limited agency in educational processed. Preteens and teenagers aspire to achievements that their parents support—to earn a higher education credential and then a professional career. But also, Ladakhi children must balance aspirations for modern lifestyles with popular narratives that lament the purported loss of traditional practices. Thus, they are actively engaged in developing contemporary Ladakhi identities that incorporate valued attributes of both the modern and the traditional. The persistence of the family as the central economic and social organizing unit in Ladakhi culture means children grow up learning to prioritize obligations to family. Therefore, the end result of education is not just about individual betterment; teenagers also hope to be able to support their families and improve their communities. However, family obligations can lead to friction with teenage students’ individual hopes and dreams. Children from poor families are more likely to struggle to complete enough education to compete for good jobs that will move them out of poverty due to their cultural obligations to assist their families, suggesting the persistent reproduction of economic class despite widespread access to education and consistent belief in its transformational value.

This dissertation primarily aims to document women’s participation in the Moroccan equestrian practice of tbourida, today. Understanding the development of tbourida in historical context is crucial to analyzing this particular intersection of sporting culture and gender from a non-Western perspective. In North Africa, horses, cavalry, and horse sports have a long and distinct history shaping the issues faced by the women’s troupes that I engaged with in fieldwork. I first present a history for tbourida, which situates ideas of human-horse relationships within both the Moroccan tradition and the broader Arabic knowledge of horses and horsemanship that women riders engage with when they ride tbourida. Most importantly, this history is dynamic and changing, demonstrating how the sport has been adapted, reshaped and reinvented over the centuries (Talley 2017). Next, these chapters engage with several years of fieldwork and ethnographic analysis of my fieldnotes of that time. I discuss the techniques women of tbourida use to navigate this male dominated sport. For example drawing on interviews, I discuss how women are recruited or join a tbourida troupe and how familial interest in the sport as well as ancestral horse keeping makes it easier for some riders to participate in tbourida. I also discuss how riders and their horses become co-beings and share a relatedness if they share a close bond. Finally, I discuss the visuality of tbourida starting with Orientalist narratives in paintings and early ethnographic photographs. I conclude with my own photo essay to create a counter-narrative to the typical images of tbourida. The addition of women riders in tbourida represents a new twist in its long history, one that shapes their individual experiences navigating the contemporary scene and enriches our understanding of horse-human bonds, kinship, and the visuality and visibility of women in Moroccan culture.

In Morocco, the fantasia, the traditional equestrian display, is not only a sport, but also an important aspect of the region’s cultural heritage. This thesis explores the ways in which the fantasia evolved from a cavalry tradition to celebratory display in traditional tribal and regional celebrations of religious saints, or festivals, usurped by the French colonial agenda, and re-articulated within the colonial and, later, contemporary society of Morocco as a state-regulated heritage sport. This paper examines the historical role of fantasia within the images and national history of Morocco, its central role in moussems, and how the state created a national and global identity around this performance. I examine how the state has effectively moved a traditional horse display from a charge of horses and triumphant ritual to a state-regulated tourist spectacle for domestic and foreign tourists by requiring most festivals to have governmental approval (such as the festival of Moussem Moulay Abdellah Amghar) and more festivals being organized by the state (Salon du Cheval and La Semaine du Cheval). I discuss why the horse in Morocco is an ideological heritage symbol that helps promote the national identity through repetitive use and performance. I use historical references to the fantasia, ethnographically explain the performance in the context of the Moussem Moulay Abdellah Amghar, and discuss the use of the horse as a representative symbol in Moroccan tourism.