1st Edition

Men and Feminism in India

Edited By Romit Chowdhury, Zaid Al Baset Copyright 2018
    268 Pages
    by Routledge India

    268 Pages
    by Routledge India

    The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men’s engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The chapters in this collection respond to two broad thematic concerns: theoretical implications of men producing feminist knowledge and the history of men’s participation in feminist endeavours. The volume also explores the undocumented contributions of men to three domains of feminist activity: institutionalization of feminism in the academy, social movements aimed at gender justice, and male writings on gender and sexuality.





    Delving into an important yet overlooked aspect of the social sciences, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, masculinity studies, modern Indian history, sociology, and social anthropology.

    Acknowledgement Introduction  Part I: Institutions 1. Disrupting Coherence: Self Reflections of a Male Ethnographer  2. Masculinity Studies and Feminism: Othering the Self, Engaging Theory 3. Men in Women’s Studies: A Case Study  4. Doing and Undoing Feminism: A Jurisdictional Journey  Part II: Movements  5. Reformer-Man and Feminist Man: The End of an Era in Kerala  6. A Feminist Journey: Population and Health in Post-Feminist Times  7. On Disloyalty  8. Men in Feminism: LGBT and Feminist Entanglements Over Masculinity  9. Pursuing Masculinity Studies in a Pro-feminist Perspective  Part III: Writings A Curious Friendship 10. Challenging Caste, Doing Gender: Paradoxes of Male Writings in North India  11. Feminism and the Question of Man: Negotiating the (Im)Possible  Afterword

    Biography

    Romit Chowdhury is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are in feminist studies, urban sociology, ethnography, and cultural studies. He has published on masculinity in the contexts of men’s rights movements, feminist methodology, urban sociability, male feminism, sexual violence, and care-giving. He held a visiting position at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, for three months in 2016.





    Zaid Al Baset is Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. His research interests are in feminist studies, sexuality studies and sociology of religion. He has published on queer identities in India. He has co-edited a special issue of Economic and Political Weekly on the theme of men and feminism in India (2015). He was a DAAD PhD fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Göttingen (October and December 2016).

    "Men and Feminism in India represents a timely and necessary intellectual intervention. These essays – written from spaces of deep interdisciplinarity – collectively move the study of gender in India in radically new and refreshing directions." - Davesh Soneji, University of Pennsylvania

    "This book, gathering established and fresh voices into careful discussion of Indian menfolk’s engagements with feminist (and queer) spaces, will quickly become an essential reference-point." - Caroline Osella, School of Oriental and African Studies, London