Fernandes - Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia

Providing a comprehensive overview of the study of gender in South Asia, this Handbook covers the central contributions that have defined this area and captures innovative and emerging paradigms that are shaping the future of the field. It offers a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives spanning both the humanities and social sciences, focusing on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The Handbook brings together key experts in the field of South Asia and gender, women and sexuality. Chapters are organized thematically in five major sections:

Historical formations of gender and the significance of colonialism and nationalism

Law, citizenship and the nation

Representations of culture, place, identity

Labor and the economy

Inequality, activism and the state.

This timely survey is essential reading for scholars who research and teach on South Asia as well as for scholars in related interdisciplinary fields that focus on women and gender from comparative and transnational perspectives.

Leela Fernandes is Glenda Dickerson Collegiate Professor of Womens Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan, USA. Her most recent book is Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge Ethics and Power. She is also the author of Indias New Middle Class, Transforming Feminist Practice and Producing Workers.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF GENDER IN SOUTH ASIA

Edited by Leela Fernandes

First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Leela Fernandes

The right of the editor to be identifi ed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Routledge handbook of gender in South Asia / edited by Leela Fernandes.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. FeminismSouth Asia. 2. WomenGovernment policySouth Asia.
3. WomenSouth AsiaSocial conditions. 4. WomenSouth Asia
Economic conditions. 5. Womens rightsSouth Asia. I. Fernandes, Leela.
HQ1735.3.R68 2014
305.420954dc23 2013028134

ISBN: 978-0-415-52353-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-84850-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Leela Fernandes

PART I
Historical formations

Mrinalini Sinha

Firdous Azim and Perween Hasan

Paulomi Chakraborty

PART II
Law, citizenship and the nation

Anupama Roy

Elora Shehabuddin

Prabha Kotiswaran

Vrinda Narain

Sharika Thiranagama

Saadia Toor

PART III
Representations of culture, place, identity

Maitrayee Chaudhuri

Naisargi N. Dave

Ann Grodzins Gold

Henrike Donner

PART IV
Labor and the economy

Kanchana N. Ruwanpura

Rina Agarwala

Smitha Radhakrishnan

Priti Ramamurthy

Lamia Karim

PART V
Inequality, activism and the state

Sangeeta Kamat

Mary E. John

Manuela Ciotti

Moon Charania

Rukmini Sen

Rina Agarwala is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Agarwala publishes and lectures on international development, gender, labor, social movements and Indian politics. Her book, Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India (2013), examines alternative labor movements among informal workers in India. She is the co-editor of Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia (2008).

Firdous Azim is a Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University. Her books include The Colonial Rise of the Novel (1993) and Infinite Variety: Women in Society and Literature (1996). Her current work researches the cultural history of women in Bangladesh.

Paulomi Chakraborty is Assistant Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay. Her research interests are in the partition of India, 1947, especially of Bengal, and broader debates of political collectives and gender. She is currently finalizing an essay on gendered figuration of modernity and post-partition Calcutta for an edited volume, Being Bengali: At Home and in the World.

Moon Charania is a Visiting Faculty at Georgia State University, Department of Sociology. Her current interests are transnational feminism, visual culture and queer theory. She is currently working on a book, Will the Real Pakistani Woman Please Stand Up: Global Visual Culture, Brown Bodies and Feminism, which examines the visual intersections of nation, race and empire, and feminist politics in post 9/11 Pakistan.

Maitrayee Chaudhuri is with the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her areas of interest are gender, media and the challenges to the academia in the contemporary context.

Manuela Ciotti is Assistant Professor in Global Studies at Aarhus University and Framing the Global Fellow (20112014) at Indiana University, Bloomington. She has published several articles in leading journals and is the author of Retro-Modern India: Forging the Low-caste Self (2010) and Political Agency and Gender in India (forthcoming).

Naisargi N. Dave is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her work concerns emergent forms of politics and relationality in India, specifically queer and post-human. Daves articles have appeared in journals such as American Ethnologist, Signs and Feminist Studies.

Henrike Donner is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. She has conducted research into gender, kinship, class and urban politics, and published Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalisation and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India (2008), Being Middle-class in India: A Way of Life (2011) and The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India (with Geert De Neve, 2006).

Leela Fernandes is Glenda Dickerson Collegiate Professor of Womens Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, Power