Katy Gardner

Transnational Households and Ritual: An Overview

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.

Transnational Migration and the Study of Children: An Introduction

This introductory article sets out the main challenges that the study of children poses for the understanding of transnational migration. Children are not simply a neglected empirical group, whose perspectives are rarely considered; children can also provide researchers with important insights concerning the nature of transnationalism if the phenomenon is considered through their eyes. Research on transnational children brings to the fore issues concerning familial practices and discourses, the importance of the life-course and of generation, and the role of feelings in creating and changing transnational relationships and imaginaries. Focusing on children and childrens places raises important questions concerning the relationship between the life-course and the global political economy. Finally, researching with children raises particular methodological challenges and approaches.

Migration, modernity and social transformation in South Asia: An overview

Human movement - and how it should be controlled - has become a major political issue in recent years. This volume reopens discussions on movement both within rural areas, and between villages, towns and cities - aspects and types of migration on which contemporary anthropology and sociology are largely silent - in South Asia. The book demonstrates how economic considerations apart, migrations are `projects of transformation’, in which migrants forge new identities and challenge the existing order.

Dominant Paradigms Overturned or ‘Business as Usual’? Development Discourse and the White Paper on International Development

Using the Department for International Development’s recent White Paper on Development as a case study, this article critically reassesses Escobar’s notion of development discourse. Rather than being monolithic and static, as Escobar and others have implied, the writers argue that changes can and do take place within development organizations. Not only does the White Paper clearly signal a new direction in policy; it also results both from changes within DFID – in personnel and in the balance of power between interest groups – and between DFID and civil society.

Death of a migrant: transnational death rituals and gender among British Sylhetis

In this article I discuss transnational burial rituals carried out in London and Sylhet. While collective identity and reaffirming social ties are important issues in discussing the burial of migrants in Sylhet, the main focus of the article is on gender. The analysis of what happens when Londonis die reveals a great deal about the differential effects of living between two places on men and women. While transnationalism may in some contexts be understood as potentially subversive, for the majority of Sylhetis in Britain movement between places is highly constrained by poverty and British immigration controls, as well as by particular gender and household relations. These in turn impact on men and women’s experiences of bereavement, as well as on their access to and relationship with the British state.

Lives in Motion The Life-Course, Movement and Migration in Bangladesh

Through a series of ethnographic examples drawn from long term research in Bangladesh, this article examines the relationship between different forms of migration and movement and the life course, focusing in particular upon how the life course influences peoples’ pro-pensity to move rather than how movement affects peoples’ experiences of the life course. Understanding the latter as inherently gendered, contextually varied and constructed by history, culture and global economies as well as physiology, the cases detailed in the article illustrate how human migration must be understood both in terms of the vagaries of individual lives and biographies (and hence micro-levels of analysis) as well as broader structural factors. The article is thus a reminder that the study of migration must involve appreciation of the interconnection of both micro- and macro-levels of analysis.

Death, burial and bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, East London

Abstract This article discusses the circumstances surrounding death and bereavement amongst Bengali families in East London. Based on fieldwork amongst Bengali elders in the Spitalfields area the article suggests that death and some of the rituals surrounding it are rapidly moving from the private to the public domain within Britain. Whilst ‘traditionally’ in Sylhet most deaths involve the mobilisation of locally based social networks for support and ritual, material and social factors mean that in London death often takes place within hospitals and hospices rather than homes. Combined with this, rituals of bereavement are often carried out in Bangladesh, where bodies are returned for burial. This can mean that some members of the family, especially widows who do not usually accompany their husbands’ bodies to Sylhet, are excluded from important processes of ritual grieving. Many widows are also far more socially isolated in Britain than Stereotypic images of Bengali extended families might suggest. The s...

Anthropology and development: challenges for the twenty-first century

Preface Acknowledgements Glossary Acronyms Prelude: Development, Post-Development and ... More Development? 1: Understanding Development: Theory and Practice into the Twenty-First Century 2: Applying Anthropology 3: The Anthropology of Development 4: Anthropologists in Development: Access, Effects and Control 5: When Good Ideas Turn Bad: The Dominant Discourse Bites Back Conclusion: Anthropology, Development and Twenty-First Century Challenges Notes and references Bibliography Index

The path to happiness? Prosperity, suffering, and transnational migration in Britain and Sylhet

In this article I discuss the relationship between migration and happiness via the life stories of members of a Bangladeshi family who for several generations have been involved in transnational migration between their rural home in Sylhet and a city in Northern England. Rather than to seek definitive answers concerning whether or not migration makes my interlocutors happy—as we shall see, the answers to this are highly subjective and ever changing—my intention is to ask what we might learn about both migration and happiness by considering how journeys purportedly undertaken in order to increase well-being so often lead instead to sadness, loss, and dislocation. In particular, I use Sara Ahmed’s framing of “happiness projects” to address the contradictions and ambivalence that lie at the emotional heart of transnational migration.

We demand work! ‘Dispossession’, patronage and village labour in Bibiyana, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT This paper critically appraises the usefulness of idioms and theories of ‘dispossession’ to describe changes taking place in rural Bangladesh, where rapid industrialization and ‘development’ have led to profound shifts in the agrarian economy. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in north-eastern Bangladesh, where the multinational company Chevron operate a large gas field, I argue that rather than political and economic struggles in the area involving access to land, it is access to work which is now all important for livelihoods and, as such, has become the basis for local patronage and political power. Theories of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, still widely cited in the anthropology of neo-liberal development in South Asia, are thus of limited help in explaining the changes and continuities which animate local political and economic struggles.