Mangala Subramaniam

Between Life and Death Women in an Indian State Prison

This study presents an analysis of the population and crimes of women in a state prison for women in Hyderabad, India. Women in India are disproportionately incarcerated for violent crimes, in particular, offenses related to dowry. Using qualitative data gathered from interviews with 49 women, the authors examine the context of their lives and their paths to prison. Ultimately, the authors make a case for an intersectional analysis, one that seeks to understand the lives of women in a matrix of inequalities shaped by caste, class, and gender.

Grassroots groups and poor women’s empowerment in rural India

Organizing grassroots groups, particularly among the deeply disadvantaged may require initial facilitation through a leader. This article suggests that such facilitative leadership will adopt a diffused form with increased participation and involvement of members in groups. Thereafter, members are less likely to rely on the facilitative leader for decision-making or collective action. Based on primary data from sanghas organized as grassroots groups through the Mahila Samakhya Karnataka (MSK) program in rural India, the article examines the effects of group characteristics; structure and leadership; and individual participation on the political-cultural empowerment of members. The analyses suggest that older bureaucratic grassroots groups are more likely to be empowering for women members. Members’ involvement in the process of creating, setting up and adopting rules and procedures is significant for change within the family and the community, particularly for the poor illiterate dalit women in this case.

Intellectual Closure: A Theoretical Framework Linking Knowledge, Power, and the Corporate University:

Scholars have recently called attention to the changing nature of the American university in the wake of the current economic downturn. Considering the transformative nature of knowledge production in the United States, we introduce the concept of intellectual closure in illustration of the unintended outcomes of individual decisions and career trajectories as they operate under the forces of social closure. Intellectual closure is defined as subtle and hidden forms of constraint on individual agency. Intellectual closure includes calculative thinking about how to publish in flagship journals, avoidance of high-risk projects, and preference for short-term projects with more immediate rewards. Structural constraints, specifically within sociology, are enabling the emergence of narrower perspectives and eroding former professional norms as individual decisions aggregate, unintentionally, to constitute a more competitive discipline with narrower definitions of productivity and quality.

NGOs and Resources in the Construction of Intellectual Realms: Cases from India

Resources received by NGOs, particularly in the developing world, are instrumental in shaping program activities and in establishing, through donors, the hegemony of Western knowledge. Building on earlier work involving the spatial and locational politics of knowledge, I argue that donors providing resources for designing and implementing programs, including that for capacity building, impact the structuring of knowledge to create intellectual realms. Intellectual realms structure knowledge and create bounded spaces in ways that maintain the centrality and power of knowledge producers in the West. The donors pre-determine activities to be pursued and utilize, the capacity building initiatives as mechanisms for promoting theoretical ideas and frameworks that conform to knowledge production in the West. Using two cases from rural India, I discuss the ways in which donor priorities can adversely impact local communities and how power relations at the local level and across the local and global levels facilitate the construction of knowledge.

Whose Interests? Gender Issues and Wood-Fired Cooking Stoves

This article examines the role of the welfare state with reference to the design and dissemination of improved models of wood-fired cooking stoves in rural India. Drawing from the feminist sociological perspective, the author examines the role of the state in shaping womens needs. Broadening the meaning of the term welfare services to include development interventions targeted at disadvantaged groups, the author argues that power relations lead the state to define what womens needs are, exclude them from development interventions, and make them dependent on the state. The definition of womens needs as reflected in Indian state policies shows a bias that assumes that women are essentially homemakers, and the relatively lesser power that poor women exercise both in the public and private spheres constrains them from expressing their needs. Women organizing around conscious interests challenge the boundaries within which their needs, as women, are perceived.

The Indian Women's Movement1

country with a history of social movements. It is particularly known for Gandhi’s strategic use of nonviolence in the national freedom movement. Related to the freedom movement of more than 50 years ago, a key area of concern for the women’s movement involves religion, particularly Hindu-Muslim differences. This concern was connected to the legacy of the partition of India and the enormous violence that accompanied independence and the creation of India and Pakistan as two separate nations. Women’s organizations confronted and engaged with victims of violence, with the religious fanaticism, and with divisions among women on the basis of religious communities. Women were victims of both groups, Hindus and Muslims. Although the trauma finds some articulation in the literature (Butalia 2000), the scale of the tragedy was enormous. The women’s movement (as it closely aligned with the freedom movement then) clearly had to locate its work in a broader political struggle while understanding the specific impact of religious communalism on women (Karat 1997). The effects of partition find parallels in recent discourses on the effects of wars on women and children and the more recent rise of religious-based violence in India. Prior to India’s independence, organizations that addressed social issues and sought change for women were closely associated with the independence movement. The umbrella organization of the pre-independence period is the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), the most influential of all organizations, which originally met to discuss women’s education. But the women found that they could not discuss education without also addressing social problems (like dowry, child marriage, and widow remarriage). After independence, in 1947 the AIWC incorporated the Women’s Indian Association and was succeeded by the National Federation of Indian Women. The other major organization was the National Council of Women in India, the Indian branch of the International Council of Women. Stereotypical activities by women’s organizations and apathy toward crucial issues concerning women marked the first two decades after independence. Although active during the freedom movement, the Indian women’s movement became particularly visible after the 1970s. The contemporary Indian women’s movement comprises numerous groups and organizations, which vary in location, form, and type; groups include urban, rural, small, large, informal, formal, localized, national, internationally affiliated, and combinations of all these forms, such as local informal branches of national organizations (Subramaniam 2001; Desai 1996,1988; Desai and Patel 1985). Locally, women form groups or clubs based on credit programs, community improvement groups (often based on local governance institutions such as the A SYMPOSIUM: BRIDGING SCHOLARSHIP: THE INDIAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Introductory essay: environmental justice – just livelihoods

Environmental justice (EJ), or the issue of ensuring fair access to environmental decision-making and resources for all groups in society, is a critical concern across the world. Too frequently, en...

Gender, Domestic Violence, and Patterns of Conviction: Analysis of India’s Supreme Court Rulings ☆

Abstract Purpose The practices and arrangements within a family can create grounds for violence. Although we agree that family processes are important, we think that these explanations downplay the structure of families (nuclear, extended) and thereby the ways in which gender relations are organized. In this paper, domestic violence is explored as an intra-family dynamic that extends beyond the intimate partner relationship and which seeps into court rulings of cases of such violence. Methodology/approach Using archival data from 164 Supreme Court case decisions on domestic violence in India for the period 1995–2011, we examine both the patterns of conviction and the complexities of gender relations within the family by systematically coding the Court’s rulings. Findings Analysis of court rulings show that mothers-in-law were convicted in 14% cases and the husband was convicted in 41% cases. We call attention to the collective nature of the domestic violence crime in India where mothers-in-law were seldom convicted alone (3% of cases) but were more likely to be convicted along with other members of the family. Two dominant themes we discuss are the gendered nature of familial relations beyond the intimate partner relationship and the pervasiveness of such gendered relationships from the natal home to the marital family making victims of domestic violence isolated and “homeless.” Research limitations/implications Future research may benefit from using data in addition to the judgments to consider caste and class differences in the rulings. An intersectionality perspective may add to the understanding of the interpretation of the laws by the courts. Social implications Insights from this paper have important policy implications. As discussed in the paper, the unintended support for violence from the natal family is an indication of their powerlessness and therefore further victimization through the law will not help. It is critical that natal families re-frame their powerlessness which is often derived from their status as families with daughters. Considering that most women in India turn to their natal families first for support when they face violence in their marriages, policy must enable such families to act and utilize the law. Originality/value By examining court rulings on cases of domestic violence in India we focus on the power exerted by some women particularly within extended families which is central to understanding gender relations within institutions. These relations are legitimized by the courts in the ways they interpret the law and rule on cases.

Stranded between the law, family, and society: Women in domestic violence and rulings of India’s Supreme Court

Violence against women takes diverse forms across the world. Domestic violence in South Asia has received special attention because of both its prevalence and severity. While laws are essential to address domestic violence, the authors of this article argue that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law to rule on cases is crucial for women. Drawing on the concept of ‘being stranded’, the authors argue that women facing violence are protected by neither the law nor their marital or natal family. Using archival data comprising decisions of India’s Supreme Court on 218 domestic violence cases for the period 1995 to 2014, the article examines the outcomes for the woman (victim) as well as the text of the judgments. The woman had died in the majority of cases reaching the Supreme Court. Moreover, rulings were almost equally favorable or unfavorable in cases when the woman was alive. The thematic analysis point to the lack of protection for women facing violence.

Transnational Field and Frames: Organizations in Ecuador and the US

Abstract Adopting a two-sited approach, this paper examines frames deployed by a network of organizations by developing the concept of the transnational field. The transnational field is the geo-specific field within which the movement organizations are encompassed which can explain the differential power across ties in a transnational network. It enables analyzing whether frames at the local and transnational level are similar, remain as is or are altered within a field which is mediated by the power dynamics embedded in the political-economic-cultural relationships between countries. Using qualitative data, this study of ties between movement organizations in the Amazonian region of Ecuador (local level) and organizations in the United States (transnational level) provides evidence for empirical and narrative fidelity of frames at both ends of the network. The two-sited approach enriches the understanding of resistance to globalization by prioritizing the perspective of indigenous peoples in the Global South highlighting the North–South power dynamic. Departing from common assumptions about the power of US-based groups in the choice of frames deployed, the analysis show that ties between organizations in a transnational network are complex as they rely on each other for resources and information. We discuss the conditions under which local frames are deployed or redefined at the transnational level.