2nd Edition

Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia

Edited By Leela Fernandes Copyright 2022
    424 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This new edition of the Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia provides a comprehensive overview of the study of gender in South Asia. The Handbook covers the central contributions that have defi ned 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. This revised edition has been thoroughly updated and includes new chapters, thus adding new areas of scholarship. The Handbook is organized thematically into five major parts:

    • Historical formations and theoretical framings

    • Law, citizenship and the nation

    • Representations of culture, place, identity

    • Labor and the economy

    • Inequality, activism and the state

    The Handbook illustrates the ways in which scholarship on gender has contributed to a rethink of theoretical concepts and empirical understandings of contemporary South Asia. Finally, it focuses on new areas of inquiry that have been opened up through a focus on gender and the intersections between gender and categories, such as caste, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion. This timely study 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.

    Part I Historical Formations and Theoretical Framings

    1. Gendered Nationalism: From Women to Gender and Back Again?

    Mrinalini Sinha 

    2. Construction of Gender in the Late nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century in Muslim Bengal: The writings of Nawab

    Firdous Azim and Perween Hasan

    3. Gender, Women and Partition: Literary Representations, Refugee Women and Partition Studies 

    Paulomi Chakraborty 

    4. The Contact Zones of Intersectionality: Inequality and Knowledge Production on India

    Leela Fernandes

    5. Dalit Feminist Thought

    Shailaja Paik

    6. Brahmanical Ignorance and Dominant Indian Feminism's Origin Stories

    Dia D'Costa

    Part II Law Citizenship and the Nation

    7. Gender and Citizenship in India

    Anupama Roy 

    8. Gender, Activism and Democratic Politics in Bangladesh 

    Elora Shehabuddin 

    9. Law, Sex Work and Activism in India

    Prabha Kotiswaran 

    10. The Supreme Court of India and Maintenance for Muslim Women: Transformatory Jurisprudence 

    Vrinda Narain 

    11. Female Militancy: Reflections from Sri Lanka 

    Sharika Thiranagama 

    12. Weaponizing Women: Kashmir and the Indian military Occupation

    Ather Zia

    Part III Representations of Culture, Place, Identity 

    13. The Political Economy of Moral Regulation in Pakistan: Religion, Gender and Class in a Postcolonial Context

    Saadia Toor

    14. Gender, media and popular culture in a global India 

    Maitrayee Chaudhuri 

    15. Death and Friendship: Queer Archives of the Space Between 

    Naisargi Dave 

    16. Women's Place-making in Santosh Nagar: Gendered constellations

    Ann Grodzins Gold 

    17. Vernacular Frames Queer Encounters

    Navaneetha Mokil

    Part IV Labor and the Economy 

    18. Global Governance Initiatives and Garment Sector Workers in Sri Lanka: Tracing its Gender and Development Politics 

    Kanchana Ruwanpura 

    19. An Intersection of Marxism and Feminism among India’s Informal Workers: A Second Marriage? 

    Rina Agarwala 

    20. A Feminist Commodity Chain Analysis of Rural Transformation in Contemporary India 

    Priti Ramamurthy 

    21. NGOs, State and Neoliberal Development in South Asia: The Paradigmatic Case of Bangladesh in a Global Perspective 

    Lamia Karim 

    22. Gender and Paid Domestic Work in Sri Lanka

    Annemari de Silva

    Part V Inequality, Activism and the State 

    23. The Aurat March: Women's Movements and New Feminisms in Pakistan

    Shama Dossa

    24. Feminism, Sexual Violence and the Times of #MeToo in India

    Mary John 

    25. Dalit Women Between Social and Analytical Alterity: Rethinking the ‘Quintessentially Marginal’ 

    Manuela Ciotti 

    26. Feminism, Sexuality and the Rhetoric of Westernization in Pakistan: Precarious Citizenship 

    Moon Charania 

    27. Mapping Women’s Activism in India: Resistances, Reforms and (Re)-Creation

    Rukmini Sen

    Biography

    Leela Fernandes is Director and the Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. She is the author of numerous books and essays. Her books on India include India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform (2006), Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills (1997), and her forthcoming book, Governing Water in India: Urbanization, Inequality and the Liberalizing State (2022).