City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Domestic goddesses, maternity, globalization and middle-class identity in contemporary India, Henrike Donner

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Domestic goddesses

electronic resource

bibliography

Henrike Donner

Urban anthropology series

maternity, globalization and middle-class identity in contemporary India

Henrike Donner looks at how middle-class women in India understand changing family life. Based on extensive fieldwork in Calcutta, he explores the ideas, practices and experiences women have of marriage, childbirth, their children's education and of their own identity., Based on extensive fieldwork in Calcutta, this book provides the first ethnography of how middle-class women in India understand and experience economic change through transformations of family life. It explores their ideas, practices and experiences of marriage, childbirth, reproductive change and their children's education, and addresses the impact that globalization is having on the new middle classes in Asia more generally from a domestic perspective. By focusing on maternity, the book explores subjective understandings of the way intimate relationships and the family are affected by India's liberalization policies and the neo-liberal ideologies that accompany through an analysis of often competing ideologies and multiple practices. And by drawing attention to women's agency as wives, mothers and grandmothers within these new frameworks, Domestic Goddesses discusses the experiences of different age groups affected by these changes. Through a careful analysis of women's narratives, the domestic sphere is shown to represent the key site for the remaking of Indian middle-class citizens in a global world