Gender in South Asia
Social Imagination and Constructed Realities

The book theorizes gender in terms of models generalizing upon historical sources and lived realities.

Subhadra Mitra Channa (Author)

9781107043619, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 September 2013

238 pages
23.7 x 15.5 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

This book is an examination of gender in South Asia and its intersection with other social variables like caste and class. It spans a wide canvas in terms of different social classes, ranging from elite to Dalit women of India, and takes material from ancient texts and modern media, literature and ethnographic materials forming a historical discourse. There is an appraisal of what feminism means in the Indian context and the cross-cultural construction of patriarchy that varies in its manifestations across time and space. The readers are taken on a journey that shows how gender can only be understood in its social and historical context and as a dynamic and performative concept that emerges out of both collective imaginations and social realities. The use of descriptive and narrative style makes the book readable and enjoyable to both academic and non-academic readers.

Preface
1. Introduction
2. Colonial India and the construction of upper-caste/class women
3. Elite women: education and emergence of feminism
4. Work and gender relations of a low-caste group in urban Delhi
5. Globalization and the emerging gender issues in India
6. Conclusion: redefining the feminine
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]