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Negotiating Discourses of Womanhood in India: an Ethnographic Study of Young Women in a Chennai Hostel

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Negotiating Discourses of Womanhood in India: an Ethnographic Study of Young Women in a Chennai Hostel Negotiating Discourses of Womanhood in India: An Ethnographic Study of Young Women in a Chennai Hostel Josephine Varghese August 2019 Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology School of Language, Social & Political Sciences University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy For my father Poonoly Varghese who strove to create for his children an environment that nurtured curiosity and intellectual growth. And for my mother Mable Varghese who is an infinite source of strength and acceptance. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 7 Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Prologue ................................................................................................................................................ 10 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 15 India post-Independence: From Fabian socialism to neoliberal capitalism ..................................... 17 Discursive constructions of Indian womanhood ............................................................................... 22 Demographic shifts ........................................................................................................................... 28 The ‘New Indian Woman’ ................................................................................................................. 29 Recent debates around gender and womanhood in India .............................................................. 33 Research agenda ............................................................................................................................... 36 The City: Chennai .............................................................................................................................. 37 Women’s hostels in Urban India ....................................................................................................... 38 Thesis structure ................................................................................................................................ 39 Chapter 2: Review of Literature .......................................................................................................... 42 Women’s movements and feminism in India ................................................................................... 42 The ‘New Indian Woman’ ................................................................................................................. 51 Body Politics ...................................................................................................................................... 52 Gender in migration scholarship ....................................................................................................... 53 ‘Street harassment’ and safety in the city ........................................................................................ 56 The practice of dowry in India .......................................................................................................... 60 3 Marriage, love and premarital sex in contemporary India .............................................................. 65 ‘Fairness’ and beauty ....................................................................................................................... 67 Chapter 3: Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 72 Theoretical Approach ........................................................................................................................ 72 Feminist Poststructuralism ............................................................................................................... 73 Neoliberalism and womanhood ........................................................................................................ 77 Ethnography and Discourse ............................................................................................................. 80 Postcolonial Theory ........................................................................................................................... 80 Ethnography ...................................................................................................................................... 87 Ethnography at home: Studying one’s own society ......................................................................... 87 Contemporaneity in anthropology ................................................................................................... 90 The ‘discourse of familiarity’ ............................................................................................................. 91 A note on reflexivity .......................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 4: Research Methods.............................................................................................................. 94 Fieldwork ........................................................................................................................................... 94 Women’s hostels in urban India ....................................................................................................... 97 Participant observation ................................................................................................................... 108 Interviews ........................................................................................................................................ 116 Photography and ‘live online fieldnotes’ ........................................................................................ 120 Analytic method: Thematic Analysis ............................................................................................... 121 4 Chapter 5: “Baby, will you come with me?” Young women’s narratives of street harassment and safety in and around Chennai ............................................................................................................ 123 Defining Street Harassment ............................................................................................................ 124 Entering shared spaces in the city .................................................................................................. 126 Strategies employed to negotiate/manage everyday street harassment ...................................... 132 Complexity and contradiction in women’s talk about, and responses to, street harassment ....... 136 Chapter 6: “This is the way things are”: Young women negotiate dowry practices ....................... 142 Dowry in Tamil Nadu ....................................................................................................................... 144 Contradictory discourses on dowry ................................................................................................ 145 The normalization of dowry ............................................................................................................ 146 Dowry and divorce .......................................................................................................................... 151 Embracing the practice of dowry .................................................................................................... 153 Dowry vs higher education ............................................................................................................. 154 Resisting dowry ............................................................................................................................... 155 A summary of key observations ...................................................................................................... 159 Chapter 7: Love, marriage and premarital sex .................................................................................. 161 Discourses on marriage in India ...................................................................................................... 162 Complicating the love/arranged marriage binary ........................................................................... 163 Premarital sex and virginity: Virginity as capital? ........................................................................... 173 ‘Sex talk’ in the hostel ..................................................................................................................... 176 “It’s okay if you marry the same guy” ............................................................................................. 179 Resisting the dominant construction of virginity ........................................................................... 182 5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 184 Chapter 8: ‘Fair and Lovely’? Negotiating Indian beauty norms ..................................................... 186 Hostel residents’ use of cosmetic products .................................................................................... 188 Beauty and the city ........................................................................................................................
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