Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Deborah Christina Menezes
(University of Edinburgh)
- Location:
- C301
- Start time:
- 26 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel explores the expression of agency in its various forms in the everyday lives of groups who have been accorded a marginalized position in the mainstream narrative of South Asia.
Long Abstract:
At the backdrop of several socio-political as well as economic changes taking place in South Asia marginalized groups have come into focus of research. While much has been written about the processes through which the 'economically insignificant' becomes marginalized, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which these apparently subordinate groups articulate emancipatory imaginaries and oppositional projects. This agency cannot always be usefully understood on a spectacular sense. Rather it has to be made sense of in everyday lives of the people, in their personal and mundane decision making, in their negotiation with the institutions and structures of dominance. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in different parts of South Asia and spanning a range of conceptual orientations, this panel explores how agency is expressed in various ways both active and subtle, by the apparently subordinated.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Supurna Banerjee (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
With the use of ethnographic data from two tea plantations in North Bengal, the paper examines this language of protest of the women workers and seeks to map their perception of agency. It tries to explore the whole spectrum of actions which might constitute their act of agency. From here the paper goes on to examine the different sociological factors behind these various forms of agency.
Paper long abstract:
Tea plantations being social spaces can be conceived as gendered space. The socio-spatial arrangement places the women workers at a position of disadvantage both within the household and the workplace.
However these socio-spatial positioning are not immutable. The efforts of the dominated group to carve out their spaces within constitute their agency. But this agency cannot be collated with activism at all times. Often this agency takes invisible forms of insubordination which are aimed not so much at changing the prevailing system which subjects them to such forms of exploitation but rather to use it to their least disadvantage. While in some cases the forms of dissent are almost on the lines of activism taking help of the existing structures such as trade unions and non-governmental organizations, there are also instances of spontaneous forms of protest by striking work or staging demonstrations against the management. Alongside this, other apparently invisible forms of resistance may take the form of spreading rumours, singing songs about their plight and such other apparently innocuous actions which in reality express an effort to carve out a space within the prevailing arrangement.
With the use of ethnographic data from two tea plantations in North Bengal, the paper examines this language of protest of the women workers. It tries to explore the whole spectrum of actions which might constitute their act of agency. From here the paper goes on to examine the different sociological factors behind these various forms of agency.
Deborah Christina Menezes (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the articulation of emancipatory imaginaries by older people in care homes. The paper is rooted in the local construction of presentation and transformation of self by older people in care homes yet illuminates a broader location within the phenomenology of 'agency and care'.
Paper long abstract:
The manifestation of self is a social product in two ways: it is a product of the roles and performances that an individual plays in social situations in society and secondly it is a product of validation and norms of society. Within an institution the capacity to sustain this self of a resident depends on his/her access to personal possessions, privacy and autonomy, thus attempting the construction of the self under institutional constraints. Institutions providing care for older people in India tend to revolve around a set of controls and routine. The result of this controls and routines on the presentation and transformation of self of the older people as individuals and as a group is the focal point of this paper. The paper is based on qualitative data collected from a care home in Goa, India. It attempts to explore the presence of agency which is manifested in everyday forms of resistance by older people in care homes. It examines how the institution becomes a battle ground for the older person between individual self and that of the institution. However in some cases it also becomes a protector and liberator of an individual self. The outcome however depends on the articulation of emancipatory imaginaries by the residents. The attempt of the paper is rooted in the local construction of presentation and transformation of self by older people in care homes yet illuminates a broader location within the phenomenology of 'agency and care'.
Feyza Bhatti
Paper short abstract:
Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with two generations of women from central Punjab (Pakistan) in 2010/11, this paper will attempt to investigate transformations in familial power structures by exploring how Punjabi women negotiate their reproduction with their husbands and mothers-in-law during an era of rapid fertility decline in Pakistan.
Paper long abstract:
In extremely patriarchal countries husband's domination over his wife's reproductive behaviour is accepted as 'normative'. In Pakistan, where the extended kinship structures have a strong social power on individuals' choices and decisions, it is also presumed that fertility decisions might go beyond the couples, and mothers-in-law who are at the highest step of the hierarchal relations among women of the household, particularly have significant control over their daughters-in-law's reproductive choices and decisions.
Currently, Pakistan is going through a remarkable demographic phase. The total fertility rate (TFR), which remained stagnant around six to seven children per women during 1970s and 1980s, declined rapidly from 5.4 in 1990/91 to 4.1 in 2006/07. Has there been a change in familial power structures? How do young women negotiate their reproduction as compared to their mothers and mother-in-laws? How do other social developments, particularly increasing schooling of women, influence this negotiation process?
This paper aims at investigating transformations in familial power relations underpinning this fertility decline by exploring how women from two generations negotiate their reproduction with their husbands and mother-in-laws.