Elizabeth Chacko

Women's use of contraception in rural India: a village-level study.

This paper examines the determinants of contraceptive use among married women in four villages in rural West Bengal, India. It uses primary quantitative data obtained from a survey of 600 women and qualitative data derived from ethnographic methods. Bi- and multi-variate analyses demonstrate that the factors that most influence a womans use of contraception include her age, the number of living sons she has, and her religious affiliation. The study also shows that the availability and quality of permanent village-based government health care affects the use of modern contraception. The use of temporary family planning methods is negligible in the area.

Ethiopian Ethos and the Making of Ethnic Places in the Washington Metropolitan Area

Immigrants from Ethiopia form the largest community of peoples from Sub–Saharan Africa in the Washington metropolitan area. Like other relatively recent immigrant groups, Ethiopians are dispersed in the region. As residential proximity becomes less common, places that fashion and reflect ethnic community and that provide settings for its continuance also have changed. Although religious and secular institutions continue to play important roles in ethnic place–making, new ethnic places have come into being. Ethnic sociocommerscapes are ethnic business areas that serve dual purposes as commercial areas and sites of social interaction between co–ethnics. Ethnic arenas are the more ephemeral spaces that are appropriated and revisited regularly by the community. In contemporary times, ethnic places are even forged in the intangible milieus of cyberspace and through radio waves and television. Viable ethnic immigrant communities such as the Ethiopians in the Washington, D.C. region are produced and preserved through the combined effects of these various ethnic places.

Identity and Assimilation among Young Ethiopian Immigrants in Metropolitan Washington

Ethiopians are a recent immigrant group in the United States, having entered the country in significant numbers during the 1980s and 1990s. This preliminary study examines the ethnic and racial identities of children of first‐generation Ethiopian immigrants living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The results of twenty in‐depth interviews demonstrate that race is a much more fluid and contested form of identification than is ethnicity to the young immigrants, who equate the latter unilaterally with their Ethiopian heritage. Immigrants also adopt different subject identities in various locales, favoring those that are most in accordance with their needs and sense of self.

The Mixed Embeddedness of Ethnic Entrepreneurs in a New Immigrant Gateway

In this research the concept of mixed embeddedness is used to analyze how economic and political opportunity structures and the group characteristics of Ethiopian and Bolivian immigrants have affected the establishment and development of their businesses in metropolitan Washington, DC. The study relies upon interviews, focus groups, census data, and mapping to assess the entrepreneurial activities of both groups. As a relatively new immigrant destination, metropolitan Washington lacks many of the institutional supports found in older gateway cities. Our findings show that Bolivians and Ethiopians entered into entrepreneurial activities due more to experiences of blocked mobility and labor market segmentation than due to ethnic enclave formation. In addition, their settlement and associations within particular jurisdictions in the region played a significant role in their social and economic integration as entrepreneurs. The study concludes with an assessment of mixed embeddedness as a valuable lens from which to understand entrepreneurship at the metropolitan scale.

Marriage, development, and the status of women in Kerala, India

This article explores the linkages between womens status and marriage in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Widely known as a progressive region, with high levels of social development despite poor economic growth, Kerala also fares exceptionally well in terms of standard indicators of female position. However, closer scrutiny of prevailing cultural mores, particularly in relation to marriage practices and family structure, reveals a less promising picture of entrenched inequality in relationships between women and men. Discriminatory inheritance rights, the widespread practice of dowry, and increasing violence against women all undermine womens status in Kerala.

Placing immigrant identities

In this afterword to our special issue on immigrant identity and place, we explore the importance of place and context in forming immigrant identity, as well as the various ways in which immigrants make places. Discussions of immigrant adaptations often just consider reception at the national scale, whereas immigrants move into particular cities and towns. This article details some of the different ways that immigrants interact with their places, how the process of immigration introduces hybrid identities, and the differences in the immigrant experience by gender, status, and color.

Longings and belongings: Indian American youth identity, folk dance competitions, and the construction of ‘tradition’

Abstract This article examines the development of the ‘cultural competition’ as a site for the production of multiple identities by Indian American youths on American college campuses. Through the examination of two categories of folk dance competitions (bhangra and raas-garba) at a private university in Washington, DC, we argue that these competitions appear to resist hybridity and produce rhetoric that marginalizes diasporic culture in favour of the ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ culture of the homeland. However, the goal of expressing uncontaminated ‘authentic’ culture is not realized as diasporic identities and cultures consistently interrupt and undermine homogenizing narratives of ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’. We also demonstrate that these folk dance groups often reinforce an ethno-regional distinctiveness rather than a hybrid or pan-Indian identity.

Hybrid sensibilities: highly skilled Asian Indians negotiating identity in private and public spaces of Washington, DC

This paper analyzes the expression of identities of first-generation (FG) immigrants from India in private and public spaces. Focusing on high-skill upwardly mobile professionals living in the Washington metropolitan area, the study found that despite “Indian” being a primary descriptor, these FG immigrants had developed hybrid identities that included Indian and American elements, considered themselves Westernized cosmopolitans prior to their arrival in the USA, and acculturated selectively in private and public spaces. Relatively privileged due to their socioeconomic class and anticipating little prejudice, these immigrants expected to navigate life in the receiving country with dexterity and ease by selectively expressing various aspects of their hybrid identities in different locales. Although not subjected to overt racism, they were surprised and distraught when confronted with slights that spoke of their separation from mainstream America in public and semi-public spaces, particularly when the marginalizing events occurred in spaces where they believed they belonged.

Understanding the Geography of Pellagra in the United States: The role of social and place-based identities

This article examines the intersection of constructs such as North and South, white and black, rich and poor, male and female in the creation of the diseased Other during the pellagra epidemic in the United States in the early twentieth century. Pellagra was a disease of poverty, caused by poor nutrition and resulting in over 100,000 deaths in the country between 1900 and 1940. Endemic in the American South, its victims were largely low-income, female and black. The author argues that the conception of the South as the regional Other by Northern interests, a reluctance to acknowledge widespread deprivations in the region by Southern leaders, compounded by inadequate scrutiny of the racial and gender dimensions of the disease, delayed the discovery of the cause of pellagra and the implementation of public health measures to prevent and treat the disease. By highlighting the critical roles of geographical location and identity in disease prevalence, this article adds to debates on the links between place-based identity and health. It also amplifies feminist understandings of how racist, sexist and class-based binaries are refracted and reconstituted in the articulation of socio-culturally produced identities and their consequences for health.

Ethiopian taxicab drivers: forming an occupational niche in the US Capital

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the relative roles of cultural and structural factors in the emergence and solidification of taxi driving as an ethnic occupational niche among Ethiopian immigrants in the Washington DC metropolitan area within the wider context of globalization and immigrant integration. An ethnic occupational niche is the concentration and specialization of members of an ethnic group in a particular occupational activity. Using data from the US Census Bureau and in-depth interviews with 25 (male) Ethiopian cab drivers and three Ethiopian cab company owners, it examines the factors that affected the entrance of first-generation Ethiopian immigrants in this occupation since the 1980s. This research demonstrates that mixed embeddedness or the interplay of structural factors such as blocked mobility as well as cultural factors such as the strong social networks that exist among Ethiopian immigrants were important in the induction of new immigrants into taxicab driving. The demographic composition of the Washington metropolitan area and policies of the DC Taxicab Commission that allow for fairly easy entry of new drivers in the taxicab business also facilitated the emergence of this occupational niche.