Means of Awakening: Gender, Politics and Practice in Rural India: Gender, Politics & Practice in Rural India - Hardcover

Tenhunen, Sirpa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8185604975 ISBN 13: 9788185604978

Publisher: Bhatkal & Sen, 2008

Synopsis

Sirpa Tenhunen provides an ethnographically rich study of local politics and gender in rural India. It is based on her extensive fieldwork in Janta, a village near Bishnupur in Bankura, West Bengal, a state where the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M), has been in power since 1977. She documents carefully how women are emerging in the forefront of political struggles and the rise of the opposition movements in rural West Bengal, a true marker of the momentous social and political change in India. The book explores both women's political participation and agency, including marriage, dowry and women's role in the panchayats, local government in the villages. Her observations and interviews with both male and female political activists give a candid picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the CPI(M). She also observes how building of mobile networks has led to the intensification of rural networks. The book relates the study of the political domain to that of cultural practices and considers how translocal discourses facilitate local dialogue. Tenhunen argues that the gendered understanding of politics not only limits women's political participation, but also enables and shapes women's political action and critical discourses because the local concept of politics does not exclude home, kinship, and the women's domain. She suggests that the notions of modernity and development are not applied in local disputes because of their universality or the supremacy of the Western model of modernisation, but because these, through their local interpretations, offer concepts through which the taken-for-granted practices can be discussed and questioned, which in turn become means of awakening: of turning women's personal experiences into questions of social change.

About this title

Synopsis:

Investigating the agency of rural women in West Bengal, Tenhunen offers her ethnographic insights from her fieldwork in 'Janta' a village near Bishnupur in Bankura. Her work provides several fresh insights into the micro-processes of power in the rural areas. Particularly interesting is her discussion on rural networks: mobile phones have heralded a communication revolution in the rural areas that had for long been out of reach of telecommunications. Now satellite technology and mobile phones have circumvented the lack of electricity and connected the rural with the urban areas. Thus married women maintain close contact with their natal families; farmers track commodity prices and information on farming practices: mobile phones have breached national and global distances.Tenhunen reveals the reasons behind the pre-eminence of the communists, the CPI (M) Party, in local institutions emphasizing the use of caste dynamics. While elected local panchayat [local government] officials might be from the lower castes, the local upper caste patrons have become party functionaries and continue to exercise their dominance through the party machinery.

Women have emerged as panchayat leaders and are getting integrated into politics and the public realm. Side by side, Tenhunen presents the women's views on dowry, marriage and their role in the panchayats. Indeed her book documents the process by which women are emerging in the forefront of political struggles in West Bengal.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bhatkal & Sen
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 8185604975
• ISBN 13: 9788185604978
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 174