Means of Awakening : Gender, Politics and Practice in Rural India

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Rural networking. 2. Reform and personhood: development in policy and practice. 3. Village politics. 4. The gender of politics. 5. Gender, kinship and practice. Conclusion. References. Index.

"The book relates the study of the political domain to that of cultural practices and considers how translocal discourses facilitate local dialogue. Tenhunen argues that the gendered understanding of politics not only limits women\'s political participation, but also enables and shapes women\'s political action and critical discourses because the local concept of politics does not exclude home, kinship, and the women\'s domain. She suggests that the notions of modernity and development are not applied in local disputes because of their universality or the supremacy of the western model of modernization, but because these, through their local interpretations, offer concepts through which the taken-for-granted practices can be discussed and questioned, which in turn become means of awakening: of turning women\'s personal experiences into questions of social change." (jacket)