The discussion of hospitality in its status, as opposed to exchange, aspects raised the point of wealth differences in Sherpa society. In the context of the hospitality analysis, these differences of wealth were seen merely as the objective basis, the point of departure, for status ordering, which in turn was seen as providing the idiom of political self-regulation in the community. Yet differences of wealth which, along with pedigree and piety, place people in the categories of “big,” “middle,” and “small,” also have other ramifications, which must be taken up here.

It is important to begin by noting that although these categories or strata are not true classes (defined in terms of any sort of surplus-extraction relationships), there are nonetheless real structural differences – and not just differences of comfort and life-style – generated by relative wealth and relative poverty. The immediate advantage of wealth is greater economic flexibility. The wealthy can take advantage of market opportunities when the poor cannot. The wealthy can also absorb a few bad economic breaks without being seriously undermined, whereas for the poor a few bad breaks may send them over the brink. It is clear that at some point a Sherpa family may pass a point of “take-off,” where its wealth sustains itself and even increases, and where anxiety about staying afloat and simply maintaining what it has becomes insignificant.