Re-Presenting Feminist Methodologies ─ Interdisciplinary Explorations

This book tracks the trajectory of gender in the social sciences and humanities through an exploration of the challenges and contradictions that confront contemporary feminist analysis as well as future directions. Drawing on research in India, the essays in the volume engage with the subject in breathtaking ways, each one going beyond documenting the persistence of gender inequality, instead raising newer questions and dilemmas while unravelling the complexities of the terrain. They also interrogate extant knowledge that has ‘constructed’ women as ‘agentless’ over the years, incapable of contesting or transforming social orders — by taking a close look at gendered decision-making processes and outcomes, sex for pleasure, healthcare practices, content and context of formal schooling, or the developmental state that ‘mainstreams’ gender. Do existing feminist methodologies enable the understanding of emerging themes as online sexual politics, transnational surrogacy, or masculinist ‘anti-feminist’ sensibilities? The feminist methodology delineated here will provide readers with a toolkit to assess the criticality of gender as well as its nuances. The work foregrounds the importance of intersectionality and builds a case for context-specific articulations of gender and societies that destabilise binary universals.

This volume will be useful to scholars and researchers across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities, especially gender studies, women studies, feminism, research methodology, education, sociology, political science and public policy.

Kalpana Kannabiran is Professor and Director at the Council for Social Development, Hyderabad, India. Among her book publications are Tools of Justice: Non-Discrimination and the Indian Constitution (2012); and the edited volumes The Violence of Normal Times: Essays on Women’s Lived Realities (2005); Women and Law: Critical Feminist Perspectives (2014); and Violence Studies (2016). She has taught at NALSAR University of Law and is co-founder of Asmita Resource Centre for Women. Kannabiran has written on gender, caste, tribe, violence, disability, law and free speech and is recipient of the VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research (2003) and the Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists (2012), both for her work in the field of law. She is on the editorial advisory committee of the Review of Women’s Studies of the Economic and Political Weekly.

Padmini Swaminathan is Professor and Chairperson of the School of Livelihoods and Development at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, India. A former Director at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, she also held the Reserve Bank of India Chair in Regional Studies at MIDS. Her research work covers industrial organization, labour, occupational health and skill development, all from a perspective of gender. Her recent publications include the edited volume Women and Work (2012). She currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals including Gender, Technology and Development, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Entrepreneurship and the editorial advisory committee of the Review of Women’s Studies of the Economic and Political Weekly.