Search results

Domestic violence is the manifestation of gender and power within intimate and family relationships. How women make sense of their experience of violence may be influenced by the presence or absence of collective hermeneutical resources. In spaces where feminist interpretive resources are not available, women’s authentic experiences tend to be erased, misunderstood, and misrepresented even in institutions that are meant to protect them. This chapter critically examines one such institution – survey research. While surveys show the extent of a social problem, it is essential to examine whether surveys highlight or erase the various ways in which women struggle with violence. This leads to the questions: What hermeneutical resources do women have to make sense of their experience of violence? How do surveys erase or enhance collective understanding of women’s experience of violence? This chapter juxtaposes the findings about women’s attitudes toward domestic violence as measured by the Tamil Nadu National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2016 with ethnographic data gathered from rural Tamil Nadu, India. In the survey, more than 70% of the women justified domestic violence against women. In contrast, analysis of ethnographic data revealed that women rarely justified violence but rather struggled with violence in three ways – subverting violence, calibrating violence, and collaborating against violence. Where there were organizing structures, such as a union, women resorted to collaborative action. Thus, surveys that measure women’s attitudes toward domestic violence as static mind-sets erase how consciousness is an outcome of political organizing that provides marginalized groups with liberational interpretive resources.

The tsunami that swept the shores of Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, killed over 30,000 people regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. This article deals with a different conflict – one fashioned by human beings, which has caused the loss of an estimated 70,000 lives. The vast majority of the lives lost have been from the minority Tamil population. The basic argument of this article is that the desire to uphold a unitary state in Sri Lanka established by the British colonial rulers in 1833 has really been the desire to establish Sinhala hegemony over the minorities, particularly the Tamil minority.

This chapter examines the manner in which a disaster-affected population of artisanal fishers relocated inland to new sites following the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 experienced and adapted to problems of water quality, scarcity, sanitation, and drainage. While numerous studies of conflicts over water tend to focus on issues of equitable access (see Anand, 2011), this chapter seeks to link the problem to the contested priorities driving land and resource use and access. I show how inland relocation negatively impacted households, making it harder to sustain livelihoods due to distance from the coast, while imposing new costs including that of commodified and scarce water, locational deficiencies, and the structural weaknesses of new housing. Placed in a historical context, the problem of water can be seen as an aspect of the long-term problem of ecologically unequal exchange pitting local artisanal fisher communities against an aggressively state-supported commercial fishery sector. The continuity I seek to hone in on is the pattern of imposing costs on fishers while enabling the alienation and privatization of coastal resources. Taking water not only as a vital substance presenting questions of access and quality but also as a problem of drainage and effluence enables a fuller consideration of how the unequal distribution of costs on poorer populations became legitimized in the name of recovery. At the same time, the chapter also highlights the manner in which fishers refused to remain docile subjects of power and used their agency and autonomy in adapting to and sometimes refusing the terms of relocation.

In 2003, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in southern India, Jayaram Jayalalithaa, gave a speech about the “silent revolution” of the empowerment of Indian women. But 15 years on, regrettably, the promises of that revolution do not seem to have been fulfilled. Thanks to the various programs set up to champion women’s empowerment (involving local NGOs, public programs, and international support), women are now more prominent in certain public spaces and are able to play a genuine advocacy role with regard to the public authorities. Girls education has also significantly improved. But it has not brought about improved employment opportunities. Women are in fact losing out on paid employment (as is the case in India as a whole). They are also heavily indebted (not only from microcredit, but also informal lending and lending from private financial companies). Their indebtedness is disproportionate to their income, and compared to men. Moreover, women almost exclusively put debt toward the social reproduction of families. Reduced opportunities for paid employment and massive debt have hit Dalit women particularly hard. The analyses of this chapter use data collected over more than a decade in a rural area of Tamil Nadu, drawing together ethnography and quantitative data, including panel data (2010–2016). They shed light on the complexity of social change, intertwining forms of domination (here, caste, and gender), and the ambiguous qualities of so-called empowerment programs, whose impacts have been various and unexpected.

This chapter explores how traditional femininity as a form of emphasized femininity influences single mothers’ decisions to be involved in romantic relationships. It explores how women negotiate the boundaries of emphasized femininity in making their choices related to involvement in romantic relationships.

The data for this study were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 30 Malaysian Tamil women. They were selected using a purposive sampling method. The main criterion of selection was that participants were Malaysian Indian single mothers identifying Tamil as their mother tongue. Latent and manifest content analyses were used to scrutinize the interviews.

Single mothers identified their responsibilities qua mothers as the most important part of their life. Many have remained single because they were concerned about the well-being of their children. Other than that, many single mothers chose not to be involved in a romantic relationship because it may be stigmatized by their family or community. Involvement in a romantic relationship is seen as a transgression from the notion of traditional femininity, which is a form of emphasized femininity in Tamil society. Motherhood and karpu (chastity) are seen as central to the traditional notion of femininity in Tamil society.

This study contributes to the understanding of how emphasized femininity in a minority group in Malaysia influences single mothers’ decisions about romantic relationships. Furthermore, there are very few studies in Malaysia focusing on the experiences of single mothers from minority ethnic communities.

The present study aims to assess the enrollment scenario of Library and Information Science (LIS) education across different states in India. The study is purely based on the secondary data collected and compiled by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Govt. of India under All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE). The data were retrieved from the official website of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, for the period from 2011–2012 to 2017–2018. From the data analysis, it emerged that of the 36 states and union territories in India, LIS education is being imparted across 32 states and union territories, accounting nearly 90% states of the country. Tamil Nadu is the leading state in India, producing nearly one-fourth of Library Science graduates each year. The male–female enrollment at the national level stands in the ratio of 48:52 students, respectively. Of the total enrollments made during the period of study, 96% students enrolled in Nagaland were male, while nearly 72% students enrolled in Goa were females. These and many more related aspects of LIS education in India have been discussed in detail.

Anthropologists who study disasters share the widely acknowledged understanding that the effects of disasters tend to be more severe among economically and socially marginalized communities than others. Moreover, while poverty intensifies the effects of disasters, it also places survivors at the mercy of policies they have little control over because they often tend to be socially and politically marginalized on account of their poverty. Social vulnerability in other words is a determining factor in shaping the vulnerability of populations to catastrophic events. While scholars tend to focus on the catastrophic event itself as the locus of analysis, it has also become amply clear that such studies need to be in conversation with those that explore the long-term trajectories and effects of social inequality. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in southern India among artisanal fisher communities affected by the tsunami of 2004, this paper argues that the conceptual aims and claims of the vulnerability concept ought to be extended beyond the confines of the disaster (conceptualized as event), to the broader historical sweep of unequal social relations of production, exchange and consumption within which such communities find themselves. Positioned at a disadvantage in relation to powerful players such as the state, multilateral entities and private big capital, such communities nevertheless might also become important loci of possibility, as they bring to bear their own critiques of power, and fashion political strategies that often frustrate and undermine the conceptual frameworks and goals of contemporary capitalist-led development.

Crime against women is an entrenched issue in India in general and its states in particular. The existing literature unveils so many socioeconomic factors responsible behind such a social curse. Economic disparities in terms of income have also been identified as one of the crucial factors in determining the crime rates in some countries of the world. The present study seeks to examine whether income inequality has any sort of associations with the crime against women in the states of India. The study has observed rising trends of crime rates and per capita incomes across the states in India for the period 2000–2019 and crime rates in the states are positively and significantly correlated with rising inequality in income. There, thus, needs the policies related to reduction of crime against women and reduction of income inequality. The study thus suggests the interventions of the legislative system, governments' tax policies toward the rich persons, public awareness programs, etc. to reduce violence against women.

Purpose: This paper examines beef consumption practices in two villages of Tamil Nadu, India. It inquires into how the upper castes create spatial boundaries to separate the inside from the outside in their consumption of beef.

Methodology: The research was carried out in two villages of Kariacheri and Pudupattinam located in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. We conducted 70 in-depth interviews, and observed beef buying and consumption practices.

Findings: The research shows how the upper castes separate the inside from the outside and surreptitiously consume beef. Dalits or untouchables are unable to create such separations, and as a result are stigmatized and ostracized. Moreover, the distinction between the inside and the outside is not fixed but is in a state of transition.

Originality and value: This study offers insights into how stigma is defined by spatial boundaries. These insights help to understand purity, pollution, and stigma in consumption practices as ongoing processes that are often created to justify social divisions and discriminatory practices.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop academic answers to the key rural areas and smart villages and digital agriculture. This chapter analyses the National level initiatives of Government of India Mission to convert rural areas into smart cities. The Union Ministry of urban development collaborates with State Government and nominate a particular city or cities in their state. Financial incentives or benefits will be provided to enhance the quality of the city. Coimbatore being a cosmopolitan city it is also a combination of rural villages and urban township. The main objective of this chapter is to identify and explore the initiatives of SMART CITIES MISSION a joint venture activity initiated by Government of India and State Government of Tamil Nadu. The results clearly indicate how digital technologies play a pivotal role to enhance the quality of eco-friendly initiatives and to improve the smart villages and agriculture. The key recommendations are the lessons learnt from other smart cities initiatives in other states and how Coimbatore can be an example and adopt key takeaways from other states and cities around the world.