Paper short abstract:

As neoliberal policies have become more deeply entrenched in middle- class family life the meaning if the term housewife has changed. This paper discusses how middle class women Kolkata negotiate the tension between joint family values and the demand for entrepreneurial selfhood.

Paper long abstract:

As neoliberal policies have become more deeply entrenched in middle- class family life the meaning if the term housewife has changed. This paper discusses how middle class women Kolkata negotiate the tension between joint family values and the demand for entrepreneurial approaches to self realisation based on two decades of fieldwork in the city. Issues of intensive parenting, consumption and employment as well as the changing meanings of technologies if the self will be discussed.

Paper short abstract:

The ethnographic paper delineates narrative and performative aspects of middleclassness, modernity and belonging of Muslim middle class families in Lucknow. A focus on the multipolar references in knowledge production follows the translocal, if not transnational character of family life.

Paper long abstract:

Imaginaries of modern India usually draw on the recent rise of the Indian middle class. Increasing consumer choices, positioning towards a global and Indian modernity but also family arrangements and gender relations are considered important symbolic markers of middle class membership. While the Indian middle class discourse is primarily oriented around a Hindu India this paper draws attention to Muslim middle class families.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Lucknow the paper looks at the arena "home" as the generation encompassing interface where reproduction, gender relations, division of labour, care arrangements, religious practice, and ideas of kinship are negotiated -- a space where different ideas on educational strategies, consumption and lifestyles preferences, moralities, duties and outlooks on individual freedoms may clash or get reconciled.

While joint family models may be partly rearranged, family and kinship relations remain important social, economic and political resources. A great part of Lucknow's middle class families have at least one close and many distant family members abroad. At times, not even husband and wife live in the same country.

Starting with a short overview of transformations of Muslim middle class family life in Lucknow under globalization in recent years, the paper moves on to delineating how narrative and performative aspects of middleclassness, modernity and belonging are negotiated in everyday family life across gendered, intergenerational relations. A focus on the multipolar references in knowledge production follows the translocal, if not transnational character of family life.

Paper short abstract:

The status of women as gendered subjects within families has garnered attention from the fields of anthropology and development researchers. This paper will provide a gender-focused analysis of a micro-finance program geared toward women with the expressed purpose of empowering them in Kerala, South India.

Paper long abstract:

Gender and Development (GAD) theory and practice has sought to complicate assumptions of individual agency within families to recognize that relations of power within families are heavily gendered. Not all members in a given family have similar agency in laying claim to limited resources. The result is that families and family structure have increasingly become sites of intervention in development. Women are often the targets of development programs in attempts to elevate their position in their kinship networks. This is particularly the case with regard to micro-finance programs within development which now largely focus on women. At present gender research in development is still largely focused on women. In order to better understand gender within a family, I argue for the need to examine men and masculinities as gendered subjects themselves. This paper will take the state-sponsored micro-finance program Kudumbashree as a case-study around which to discuss gender and power relations within Malayali families with a focus on men and masculinities. Kudumbashree promises to empower women through its financial services, namely providing small low-interest loans to women from impoverished families. Utilizing ethnographic data gathered from an urban slum in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala over the course of 9-months, I analyze how men and masculinities are constructed within kinship networks in a setting where Kudumbashree is actively engaging in interventions to elevate the status of women. I discuss what significance the program holds for men and how they interpret the program’s expressed intent to empower women.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from the question how we learn to ‘see’ the rapid development of assisted reproductive technologies and their repercussions through visual media, my paper takes an interest in the growing number of documentaries and fictive films about transnational surrogacy and reproductive tourism in India.

Paper long abstract:

A characteristic feature of the relationship between technology and society may be seen in the fact that we are often not aware of a seminal innovation until it becomes the focus of attention and commentary in the media. Accordingly, the actual "innovation has already taken place", and Marilyn Strathern infers that, "one cannot independently 'see' that prior process of change (2002:985)". Starting from the question how we learn to 'see' the rapid development of assisted reproductive technologies and their social repercussions through visual media, my paper takes an interest in the growing number of documentaries and fictive films about transnational surrogacy and reproductive tourism in India. How is the newly emerging 'peripheral figure' of the biological family - the so-called surrogate mother - depicted in recent documentaries, short films or feature films? What roles are ascribed to her in the context of changing notions of family and motherhood? And how can we assess the contribution of films to the 'production' and circulation of knowledge about reproductive tourism in India? To discuss these three questions, I will use the example of two recently produced short films (2012 and 2014) and two documentaries about transnational surrogacy in India (2012 and 2013).

Paper short abstract:

The paper will look at discursive and visual representations of family relationships in contemporary Indian graphic narratives – a heterogeneous category of texts created by an experimental scene of young writers and artists who negotiate everyday experiences through innovative ways of narration.

Paper long abstract:

The history of the Indian graphic novel reaches back to the year 1994 when Orijit Sen's River of Stories was published, but it gathered momentum only twenty years later with Sarnath Banerjee's Corridor. Since 2004 around 30 new graphic novels have been published and a lively and innovative scene of graphic narrators has come to the fore in India. Especially interesting is the fact that, in the Indian context, authors and artists create not only the 'classical' graphic novel but also short narrative forms ('graphic short stories') and other visually designed narratives to be found in new contexts, like magazines, blogs or even installations in public space. In this paper I want to look into the representation of family relationships: What role does family play in this avant-garde genre? How does the pictorial element bear upon the notions of family transported by the genre? How is family depicted discursively and what does it 'look like' in 21st-century graphic narratives?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores pre-marital relationships of professionals in Delhi. It enquires into the role of the family in obstructing or supporting these relationships and examines the affect of these strategies on the relationship between family members.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an enquiry into a form of intimate relationship that is garnering much public attention in contemporary India, namely, pre-marital relationships. In order to query the rhetoric of individual agency and 'freedom' that often gets associated with pre-marital relationships, this paper explores the family's relation to the pre-marital experiences of the younger generation. The paper argues that though pre-marital relationships often fashion themselves as a disjuncture from the narrative of marriage, in reality, they model themselves on structures and expectations of a marital union. This paper also pays attention to the ways in which families position themselves vis-à-vis pre-marital relationships. Specifically, it discusses the strategies by which the family can obstruct or encourage certain pre-marital relationships over the others; thereby highlighting the bearing of the family's involvement in changing the nature of a coupledom, either from a non-serious to a committed one (marriage) or leading to the break-up of a serious relationship.

This paper is an enquiry of new forms of intimacies, which it is argued, are expressed not only through the phenomenon of pre-marital relationships but also in the shifting relations between the family members, caused in the pursuit of alignment of their interests, approval and disapproval, towards the pre-marital relationships. This alignment entails confrontation with sexual independence of their children, concern for class reproduction or status maintenance, and discussions and apprehensions on concepts of morality and upholding cultural integrity. The analyses of these experiences further encourage us to view the family in non-'traditional' ways.

Paper short abstract:

As compared to premarital ‘dating’ which is increasingly acceptable among the urban middle and upper classes in India, ‘live-in relationships’ pose a far bigger threat because they undermine the sanctity of the bond of matrimony.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2010, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of women declaring that they should get the rights of a wife, in case of live-in couples. Despite the reinvigoration as relationships equal to marriage in 2015, controversies in the Indian parliament as well as within the society continue. Unmarried couples often lack the blessing and support of their families. They further face practical problems such as renting a house or staying in a hotel room together. The incident of 40 couples being arrested from Mumbai hotels for 'public indecency' in August 2015 demonstrates the societal ignorance towards the right of privacy very vividly. The adversaries' main argument is a known one: the incompatibility of unmarried cohabitation with Indian culture and values. We thus overserve an obvious contradiction between the legal framework and its social acceptance. Media discourses reflect these tensions. Particularly looking at individual reader comments to relevant articles or blogposts reveals conflicting attitudes. On the one hand, the concept of live-in relationships is regarded as a welcome and progressive development but it is considered being a 'western' influence. On the other hand, concerns about the decline of the family system and the rise of a commitment-phobic generation are expressed not only by self-proclaimed conservatives but by young bloggers too. The rapidly globalizing urban middle classes in India hold a very peculiar function of being the site of anxiety around the loss of culture and tradition as well as the site of progress and social change.