South Asia

Son Preference: Sex Selection, Gender and Culture in South Asia

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Son Preference is one of the most compelling insights into the issue of sex selection I have read. Written through a scholarly yet personal lens, the author takes reader through the narrative and complexities of culture and gender in South Asia. She brings together key debates on the subject by assessing and critically engaging with existing literature in the field and providing new insights through primary empirical research.

Natvej K.Pureval’s work covers a broad range of social science discussions and draws upon textual and ethnographic material from India. With her work, Pureval invites more studies into the field of sex selection that would raise more questions about the normative backdrop of son preference issue. While son preference is not a new phenomenon, and has existed historically in many parts of Asia, it has recently become an issue of not only local but also global dimensions. The phenomenon exemplifies the gendered outcomes of social power relations as they intersect with culture, technologies, and economics.

While the literature on son preference and sex selection has been primarily concerned with understanding it as a practice, resistance and opposition to it have been more or less analytically ignored. Pureval, thus, examines policy and official anti-female foeticide activism and anti-sex selection movement that has emerged across national boundaries and involves not only feminist activists but also people from health sector and wider society. She also draws on young women thoughts and articulations, which make significant contributions to the understanding of recent and ongoing trends. Pureval demonstrates that women’s voices and attitudes towards son preference are by no means unitary and static, but rather shifting and changing.

Son Preference will be of interest to students, academics, and anyone interested in this contentious issue surrounding gender inequity and sex selection. It provides a valuable addition to the existing literature on this highly sensitive topic, and proposes new directions for ethnographic research and analysis.

Written by: Olivera Simic, July 28th 2010

Desigirls

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Ishita Srivastava

Sometimes you stumble upon really small, obscure films that leave such an impact that you just want as many people to see it as possible. Desigirls by Ishita Srivastava is one such film. Filmed as a graduate thesis project at New York University, this twenty-minute documentary explores a refreshingly new topic—the South Asian lesbian community in New York City. I had the opportunity to watch the film and speak to the director afterward. Even though Desigirls is a student film, Srivastava approaches the topic with maturity and a sincerity that makes it a truly engaging film.

The film follows two women—Priyanka and ‘A’—as they discuss their sexual identities and their role within the South Asian queer community in New York, represented by two key institutions – the Desilicious parties and the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA) meetings. Priyanka is an openly pansexual woman who embraces her sexual identity and is an active member of the community. ‘A’, on the contrary, is living a double life, afraid to come out to her parents and secretly exploring her sexual identity.

Srivastava explores the lives of the two women with sensitivity, never intruding too much on their space. While Priyanka willingly offers herself to the camera and interacts freely with it, ‘A’ turns out to be the more interesting character to follow since her anonymity allows her to be emotionally vulnerable in front of the camera. The segment where she discusses her relationship with her brother is particularly moving. Srivastava does a commendable job of letting the characters be, without forcing much upon them or from them.

At times the film becomes ambitious in its scope, trying to accomplish too much in its very short runtime. Srivastava attempts to develop the two main characters and also explore the various events centered on the community. There’s enough in there to be expanded to a longer documentary. Of the two main events, the film focuses more on the SALGA meetings even if that wasn’t the original intention. Srivastava has the ability to make the viewer feel comfortable with what’s going on in front of the camera. The presence in the SALGA support meetings doesn’t seem intrusive, and shadowing Priyanka's and A’s lives keep the viewer hooked.

The most fascinating elements in the film emerge from the observations and statements made by the various characters. At one point Priyanka decisively states that her friends from India are far more tolerant of her sexuality than the Indians she knows who have been raised in the U.S. Meanwhile ‘A’ exhibits certain resentment in the dichotomy of never being able to come out to her conservative parents yet witnessing her brother having much more freedom in lifestyle choices than her. Thus the film effectively presents the fractures present within this very small community. All in all, Desigirls is a low budget student film for sure, but the story it tells is very powerful nonetheless, and one that desperately needed to be told.

Read Pulkit's interview with Ishita Srivastava at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, June 10th 2010

Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Kenneth M. Cuno, Manisha Desai

Syracuse University Press

Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia makes available twelve essays that were presented, in earlier forms, at the 2004 symposium of the same title, which took place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The essays, edited by Kenneth M. Cuno and Manisha Desai, include analysis of eleven nation-states from Morocco to Bangladesh. With thirty-one pages of works cited, this is a valuable reference on an increasingly critical topic. Major themes include the impact of colonialism and postcolonial struggles with national identity; religious politics, and in particular religion’s impact on family law; and international standards, as outlined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and related conventions, versus nationalist efforts for self-determination without perceived pressures from outside.

The issues dealt with in these essays are complex, and I am wary of oversimplifying any of them. In the discussion of the role of colonialism, one idea that emerges is that colonial patriarchies interact with local patriarchies, creating hybrid forms that become sites of negotiation and contestation. Another idea that recurs is the interplay of religion, local custom, and the state, three venues for regulating behavior and establishing social mores. In practice, as contributor Shelley Feldman points out in her discussion of Bangladesh, this means that constitutional reform alone is insufficient to create change, because it will not (necessarily, or sufficiently) impact local customs and religious laws.

Taken together, the analyses shed light on one another. The reader can see commonalities among the nations in these interrelated regions, as well as critical differences that make each locality’s challenges unique. It becomes apparent that, as the editors point out in the introduction, “neither nationalism nor elite women’s feminism guarantees the ‘liberation’ of women.” Thankfully, these discussions also highlight many ways in which women are actors, participating in many ways, from liberatory habits of daily life to transnational feminist organizations.

Written by: Lisa Rand, May 11th 2010

Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction

admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Raminder Kaur, William Mazzarella

Indiana University Press

There is no use in burying the head of an ostrich in censorship and imagining the enemy knows nothing of what we are doing. — S.C. Lind

Censorship in South Asia dissects the history and socio-political dynamics of censorship in India, which have been transcribed into the public culture of the South Asian society over the years. The book digs deep into all forms of formal, state censorship, as well as unofficial censorship tactics that are employed by political and pressure groups—from blackening out images and words from advertising and cinema to street politics and political communication. The popular response to books like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and films like Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Water show the way censorship has left its traces on everything that goes away from the tide.

The book further explores how censorship has not only shaped the public culture, but has also given a more vivid definition to its adversary: publicity. Censorship as an organized activity has one too many actors and Censorship in South Asia examines the intentions and outcomes of these actors’ anxieties over a free press. Yet, the essays also emphasize another essential agent caught within the web of censorship: the media's call for liberalism and free speech. Despite the board of censorship’s continual attempts to control free speech, in one way or another, information does leak.

The process of censorship is not necessarily a smooth one, and controlling the liquid nature of the press can be a hard task. Censorship in South Asia traces the genealogy of censorship through time to reveal its ever-contested presence in Indian cinema and beyond.

Cross-posted with Gender Across Borders

Written by: Maria Khan, November 1st 2009

Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:02:00 +0000

By Eleanor Bluestein

BkMk Press

When it comes selecting books to read, as in life, I often find myself treading the same well-worn territory over and over again. If left to my own devices, I tend to gravitate toward memoirs written by the famous and not-so-famous. I have drawn imaginary lines in my mind around certain genres of books that I assume are just not my cup of tea: science fiction, fantasy, and fictional tales of people who live in countries that don’t exist are some of the categories that I eschew. Give me reality, albeit an embellished or subjective reality that is experienced through the crafting and retelling of a personal story or journey.

This is actually relevant because I have found myself reviewing books for this blog that I wouldn’t typically be drawn to, which has exposed me to new authors and literary genres that have expanded my view of the world. Take, for example, Tea & other Ayama Na Tales. I agreed to participate in the virtual book tour for this novel knowing that it was a book of short stories about characters who live in the fictional land of Ayama Na. Casting aside my doubts, I picked up the book a few weeks ago and found myself quickly immersed in the tales of characters inhabiting a South Asian country that is trying to rebuild itself after a long drought and internal coup during which intellectuals and artists were rounded up and killed. In Anama Ya, graft and corruption are the norm and a countryside marked with landmines has left amputees begging in the city streets.

Bluestein introduces us to characters who are trying to navigate through a world that is quickly changing and find themselves in a delicate balancing act between an ancient past and the seductive modern world with all of its allure and promise. We meet Koriatt, the prosperous owner of a car dealership whose father, a country farmer, is in declining health. Koriatt prides himself on being a successful businessman who always does right by his customers and even entertains hopes of running for office one day. In a society that still holds respect and care for aging parents as an important tenet, Koriatt is an outlier.

Bluestein outlines her characters for us with humor and compassion. We meet Kenchoreeve Pranaranasam, Ayama Na In Depth’s most experienced tour guide who comes to realize that he has more in common than he realized with the Blanks, a vacationing couple who repeatedly test his Buddhist compassion and patience:

In fact Kenchoreeve did get it. Suddenly he understood what he’d never understood before. He understood that Elise loved her husband because if she didn’t love him, if she let herself hate him, her hatred would be a bottomless pit. And he understood that two years ago he—Kenchoreeve—had made the same choice with the people he guided. For who in this demon-infested life was truly worthy to be loved? And yet, because the alternative destroyed your soul, you had no other choice…

These are just some of the characters that populate the Ayama Na universe. I thoroughly enjoyed this book not only because of the grace and humanity of the characters, but for the lessons I learned about human nature just from reading these stories.

Written by: Gita Tewari, April 20th 2009

Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms

admin — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:23:00 +0000

By Inderpal Grewal

Duke University Press

Much like restorative criminology, the new transnationalism is not a single-variant explanation of the world. Grewal destroys that line of thought when she shows cultural imperialism through the lens of feminism, class, and much more. While the basis of her argument is that becoming "American" is evidence of a hegemonic culture, what really brings this argument salience is the expansion she does of the implications regarding it. This does not only mean that individuals will be given "honorary whiteness" for service to the white patriarchy in charge of the country, but rather that the system of Americanism is largely out of the hands of this same captains of industry. The invisible hand of the economy has more to gain from under-paid and under-benefited Indian workers than trying to keep a certain race in power. Thus, while white male leaders might benefit, this transnationalism necessarily breaks down any ties of racial solidarity that whites or other races may have. Grewal does an excellent job of pushing that point through her book, which is written in a clear, formal style that is enriched by the continual ties that she has with South Asia (specifically India). This is not the mental padding that usually is the key creator of academic inertia, but rather a completely new line of reasoning that will undoubtedly be the topic of much discussion in the decades to come.

Written by: James McQuiston, December 22nd 2006