Fields Of Protest: Women’s Movement in India: 8 (Social Movements, Protest and Contention) - Softcover

Ray, Raka

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816631328 ISBN 13: 9780816631322

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1999

Synopsis

A comparative analysis of women’s struggle for change in India.

The women’s movement in India has a long and rich history in which millions of women live, work, and struggle to survive in order to remake their family, home, and social lives. Whether fighting for safe contraception, literacy, water, and electricity or resisting sexual harassment, they are participating in vibrant and active women’s movements that are thriving in many parts of India today.

Fields of Protest explores the political and cultural circumstances under which groups of women organize to fight for their rights and self-worth. Starting with Bombay and Calcutta, Raka Ray discusses the creation of “political fields”-structured, unequal, and socially constructed political environments within which organizations exist, flourish, or fail. Women’s organizations are not autonomous or free agents; rather, they inherit a “field” and its accompanying social relations, and when they act, they act in response to it and within it. Drawing on the literature of both social movements and feminism, Ray analyzes the striking differences between the movements in these two cities.

Using an innovative and comparative perspective, Ray offers a unique look at Indian activist women and adds a new dimension to the study of women’s movements on a global level.

About this title

About the Author

Raka Ray is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816631328
• ISBN 13: 9780816631322
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 236