South Asian Women in the Diaspora

Description

South Asian women have frequently been conceptualized in colonial, academic and postcolonial studies, but their very categorization is deeply problematic. This book, informed by theory and enriched by in-depth fieldwork, overturns these unhelpful categorizations and alongside broader issues of self and nation assesses how South Asian identities are 'performed'. What are the blind spots and erasures in existing studies of both race and gender? In what ways do South Asian women struggle with Orientalist constructions? How do South Asian women engage with 'indo-chic?' What dilemmas face the South Asian female scholar? With a combination of the most recent feminist perspectives on gender and the South Asian diaspora, questions of knowledge, power, space, body, aesthetics and politics are made central to this book. Building upon a range of experiences and reflecting on the actual conditions of the production of knowledge, South Asian Women in the Disapora represents a challenging contribution to any consideration of gender, race, culture and power.

Nirmal Puwar Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Sociology,University College Northampton Parvati Raghuram International Studies Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

'This edited collection is a rich and extensive set of interventions into the disabling paradigms within which South Asian women are located. It is an essential read.' Cultural Geographies 'A significant and valuable contribution to the interconnected areas of gender, migration and identity studies.' Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 'Considering the small number of recent anthropological works on kingship, for anyone interested in the topic this is an important contribution.' Richard Feinberg, Anthropological Forum