Subject Guides
- Binghamton University Libraries
- Subject Guides
- Subject Guides
- South Asia Studies
- Gender and Sexuality and Kinship
South Asia Studies
Guide Contents
Useful subject headings
Books in Bartle Library
Portraits of Buddhist Women by
A collection of stories about women from the thirteenth-century Buddhist work that reveals much about women's status in their society and within Buddhism.
Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (BQ1375 .D5613 2001 )ISBN: 0791451119- Women and Kinship : comparative perspectives on gender in South and South-East Asia by This is the first sustained effort to compare South and South-East Asia in respect of the situation of women. Arguing that kinship systems provide an important context in which gender relations are located, the study overlooks at three types of kinship system, found in their carious forms in the two regions of Asia--predominantly patrilineal South Asia and predominantly bilateral South-East Asia, with a presence of matriliny in both. The treatment of kinship departs significantly from what is usually found. Gender permeates the examination of the chosen themes, which include group placement and perpetuation, entitlement to and rights over resources, marriage, conjugal relations, implications of residence, rights over space and children, family structures and kin networks, work, female sexuality, and limits set by bodily processes. The underlying assumptions is that kinship systems are neither innocuous nor immutable, and,operating through material relations, they express themselves most effective through values and ideology. For comparison are taken up selected populations of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand--representing Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity. The results are striking: South-East Asian women's unusual degree of autonomy in economic and social life and the relative egalitarianism between the sexes contrast sharply with the situation in South Asia, characterized by strong patriliny, patrilocal family structure, women's lack of rights, and concern about female sexuality. Many other contrasts in respect of gender parities and disparities, including education, nutrition, health, and work emanate from contrasting features of kinship. Rich in information ad insights, the book fills a gap in gender studies at the same time as it challenges facile generalizations and provokes probing into apparently similar phenomena.Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (GN487 .D845 1997 )ISBN: 9280809229
Culture, Creation and Procreation
As reproduction is seen as central to kinship and the biological link as the primary bond between parents and their offspring, Western perceptions of kin relations are primarily determined by ideas about "consanguinity," "genealogical relations," and "genetic connections." Advocates of cultural constructivism have taken issue with a concept that puts so much stress on heredity as being severely biased by western ideas of kinship. Ethnosociologists in particular developed alternative systems using indigenous categories. This symbolic approach has, however, been rejected by some scholars as plagued by the problems of the analytical separation of ideology from practice, of largely overlooking relations of domination, and of ignoring the questions of shared knowledge and choice. This volume offers a corrective by discussing the constitution of kinship among different communities in South Asia and addressing the relationship between ideology and practice, cultural models, and individiual strategies.
Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (GN635.S57 C85 2000b )ISBN: 1571819126
Women's Livelihood Rights by
This interdisciplinary book looks at women`s natural resource-based livelihoods in the wider context of development viewed through the lens of citizenship rights. Unravelling the patriarchal social fabric and policy structures in India, it argues that the concept of citizenship needs to be extended to include recognition of ways of life and livelihood, so that women take their legitimate space as productive human beings, entitled to dignity as a political right, and not merely to protection and welfare. The editor weaves together a historical perspective on varied dimensions of livelihood, development and citizenship. Drawing upon rich field-based researches in 13 states across India, the authors deal with complex and inter-related themes: the need to recognise women`s right to resources and their livelihood and employment strategies; the challenges of democratic governance and of restructuring institutional systems to make them responsive; and the role of women`s collective agency in development. Reflecting upon and critically analysing context-specific issues in several less-studied locations, the book shows that there is much to be learnt from empathetic interaction with the collective struggles of poor women, and from action and dialogue on the ground. Further, it suggests that feminist politics has to network strategically with other struggles to counter the resistance of traditional and contemporary patriarchal structures, and to work towards recasting citizenship for a gender-just development that ensures women`s livelihood rights.
Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (HQ1236.5.I4 W6593 2007 )ISBN: 0761936009- Gender, "Race" and Patriarchy: a study of South Asian women by The book offers one of the first detailed studies of South Asian women, it provides new empirical data on the issues apparent in South Asian women's lives by 'giving voice' to a group of women who would otherwise remain silent. It is based upon an ethnographic study of a small South Asian community in an inner city. The book offers a new and compelling account of South Asian women, as well as focussing on the ways in which gender and 'race' interact in women s lives. The book offers an important theoretical contribution to the area of feminist theory. The concept of patriarchy is contested and reworked and applied to the study of South Asian women and their cultural experiences. In this sense, practices such as arranged marriages, dowries, domestic labour and domestic finance are analyzed as different influences of patriarchy inside the household, as well as education and the labour market as influences of patriarchy outside the household."Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (HQ1735.3 .B56 1997 )ISBN: 1840141395
- Women of South Asia byCall Number: Bartle Library Stacks (Z7964.S65 S23 )ISBN: 0527785741
Islam, Culture and Women in Asia by
An examination of the place of religion, especially Islam, in political and cultural life took on a special urgency after the events of 9/11. The essays in this volume concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday lives of people who reside in societies where Islam plays a large part. The relationship between Islam and women has always been seen as problematic, and by highlighting women's negotiations with this religion, this volume seeks to understand the many and various strategies and connections that are made, and their political and cultural ramifications. By keeping an Asian focus, the authors also seek to understand the wide panorama that Islamic societies inhabit, and the manifold political and cultural expressions that ensue from this. The effort is not only to break the image of a monolithic structure and set of beliefs, but also to highlight on-the-ground negotiations, and the ways that women in particular find spaces within Islamic structures and discourses. This book was originally published as a special issue of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.
Call Number: Downtown Center Stacks (HQ1170 .I85 2013 )ISBN: 9780415528269- Lives of early Buddhist nuns biographies as history byCall Number: eBook
Visible Histories, Disappearing Women by
In Visible Histories, Disappearing Women, Mahua Sarkar examines how Muslim women in colonial Bengal came to be more marginalized than Hindu women in nationalist discourse and subsequent historical accounts. She also considers how their near-invisibility except as victims has underpinned the construction of the ideal citizen-subject in late colonial India. Through critical engagements with significant feminist and postcolonial scholarship, Sarkar maps out when and where Muslim women enter into the written history of colonial Bengal. She argues that the nation-centeredness of history as a discipline and the intellectual politics of liberal feminism have together contributed to the production of Muslim women as the oppressed, mute, and invisible "other" of the normative modern Indian subject. Drawing on extensive archival research and oral histories of Muslim women who lived in Calcutta and Dhaka in the first half of the twentieth century, Sarkar traces Muslim women as they surface and disappear in colonial, Hindu nationalist, and liberal Muslim writings, as well as in the memories of Muslim women themselves. The oral accounts provide both a rich source of information about the social fabric of urban Bengal during the final years of colonial rule and a glimpse of the kind of negotiations with stereotypes that even relatively privileged, middle-class Muslim women are still frequently obliged to make in India today. Sarkar concludes with some reflections on the complex links between past constructions of Muslim women, current representations, and the violence against them in contemporary India.
ISBN: 9780822389033- Women of India byPublication Date: [1920?]
More readings
- Living with Śakti : gender, sexuality and religion in South Asia byCall Number: Bartle Library Stacks (BL1282.23 .L5 1999 )
- Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions byCall Number: Bartle Library Stacks (GR302 .G46 1991 )ISBN: 0812230825
