Transdisciplinary Ethnography in India: Women in the Field

179 Pages·2021·2.774 MB·English

by  Rosa Maria Perez, Lina M. Fruzzetti

Transdisciplinary Ethnography in India
This book familiarises readers with a new way to treat the subject of gender,
foregrounding the real voices of women, their experiences doing ethnographic
work, and their courage in sharing their stories publicly for the first time in the
context of India.
A useful companion to more theory-based anthropological studies, the book
connects ethnographic data to what eventually becomes theories formed from
the field. Chapters by women from a variety of disciplines – Anthropology,
Literary and Translation Studies, Political Sciences – transcend the academic
boundaries between social sciences and humanities. The book shows how the
researchers navigate in the field, write in ways that defy their academic life and
work, and call into question their narrative voice. The book presents a space for
women to reflect on their individual themes of research and at partially filling the
vacuum mentioned above, the silences of women’s voices and expressions. The
experiences described in the chapters differ, both along the divide of a “native”
and a non-“native” fieldworker and along different disciplinary fields, but they
share the experience of a long-term fieldwork in India and the need to self-reflect
on the impact of this experience, on the way the field is represented, on the people
encountered in the field, and on the way the field impacted the fieldworker. The
book is a useful presentation of how female researchers act in the field as women
and scholars.
Filling a gap in the existing literature of ethnographic research methods, the
book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the fields of
Gender Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Anthropology and Asian Studies.
Rosa Maria Perez is a senior researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology
(CRIA), ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal, and a guest professor
of Anthropology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India.
Lina M. Fruzzetti is an anthropologist at Brown University, Providence, Rhode
Island.
Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series
134 Ethnic Inequality in the Northeastern Indian Borderlands
Social Structures and Symbolic Violence
Anita Lama
135 Kashmir and the Future of South Asia
Edited by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal
136 Bangladesh and International Law
Edited by Mohammad Shahabuddin
137 Terrorism and the US Drone Attacks in Pakistan
Killing First
Imdad Ullah
138 The Bangladesh Garment Industry and the Global Supply Chain
Choices and Constraints of Management
Shahidur Rahman
139 Globalising Everyday Consumption in India
History and Ethnography
Edited by Bhaswati Bhattacharya and Henrike Donner
140 Islam and Religious Change in Pakistan
Sufis and Ulema in 20th Century South Asia
Saadia Sumbal
141 Socio-Cultural Insights of Childbirth in South Asia
Stories of Women in the Himalayas
Sabitra Kaphle
142 The Geopolitics of Energy in South Asia
Energy Security of Bangladesh
Chowdhury Ishrak Ahmed Siddiky
143 Transdisciplinary Ethnography in India
Women in the Field
Edited by Rosa Maria Perez and Lina M. Fruzzetti
For the full list of titles in the series please visit: https :/ /ww w .rou tledg e .com /
Rout ledge - Cont empor ary -S outh- Asia- Serie s /b oo k -ser ies /R CSA
Transdisciplinary
Ethnography in India
Women in the Field
Edited by Rosa Maria Perez
and Lina M. Fruzzetti
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rosa Maria Perez and Lina M.
Fruzzetti; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Rosa Maria Perez and Lina M. Fruzzetti to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Perez, Rosa Maria, editor. | Fruzzetti, Lina, editor.
Title: Transdisciplinary ethnography in india: women in the field/edited
by Rosa Maria Perez and and Lina M. Fruzzetti.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge contemporary south asia series |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005750 | ISBN 9780367770785 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032005898 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003174806 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology–Research–India. | Women social
scientists–India. | Interdisciplinary research–India.
Classification: LCC GN307.85.I4 T73 2021 | DDC 305.80072/054–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005750
ISBN: 978-0-367-77078-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-00589-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-17480-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To our children and grandchildren, in the hope that this
volume will inspire their sense of justice and humanism.

Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
ROSA MARIA PEREZ AND LINA M. FRUZZETTI
1 Traversing the otaak: Gendered fieldwork and boundaries of language 18
RITA KOTHARI
2 Familiar domesticity, unfamiliar homes: Ethnography among the
homeless homemakers of Ahmedabad 33
PAYEL CHATTOPADHYAY MUKHERJEE
3 Knowing and the production of knowledge: Sharing the field with
Bengali women 51
LINA M. FRUZZETTI
4 Witnessing vulnerability and the vulnerable witness: Gendering
emotions in fieldwork 69
SREEPARNA CHATTOPADHYAY
5 Bengali daughter, Bengali child: The roles and routes to
understanding childhood 86
HIA SEN
6 Forging identities, rethinking culture: Field work ‘among’ ‘South
Asians’ in my backyard and across the oceans 99
MAITRAYEE CHAUDHURI
viii Contents
7 A gendered field in a transnational setting: Portuguese
Hindu-Gujaratis 113
INÊS LOURENÇO AND RITA CACHADO
8 Notes from the field: Dalit women and the ambiguity of
anthropological analysis 132
ROSA MARIA PEREZ
9 Fenceless fields 147
SWARNA RAJAGOPALAN
As a conclusion 156
ROSA MARIA PEREZ AND LINA M. FRUZZETTI
Index 163
Contributors
Rita Cachado, PhD in Urban Anthropology, is a post-doctoral researcher at
CIES-IUL. She has a long-term ethnographic experience among Hindu fami-
lies in Great Lisbon and other diasporic cities and develops research on ethno-
graphic methods. She is a visiting professor at ISCTE-IUL and member of the
board of the Portuguese Association of Anthropology (APA).
Sreeparna Chattopadhyay is a cultural anthropologist by training. She finished
her AM and PhD at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Over the last
decade and a half, her research and publications have focused on gendered ineq-
uities and have been published by Culture, Health and Sexuality, Social Science
and Medicine, and Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters among others. As a
practicing feminist, Sreeparna also devotes her time to building research capac-
ity within non-profits, particularly those working on gender, health, and gender-
based violence as well as supporting digital feminist initiatives. Her research and
activism have taken her to Assam, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and West Bengal in
India. In addition to her continued focus on the intersections between gender,
health, education, and the law, she has emerging interests in the intersections
between gender, health, and technology in the Indian context. She is currently an
independent researcher based out of Bangalore.
Maitrayee Chaudhuri teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems
(CSSS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She has written
widely on feminism, media, academia, and pedagogy. Her latest publication
is Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a Transformed Public Discourse
(2017). Her other works include The Women’s Movement in India: Reform
and Revival (1993), The Practice of Sociology (ed.) (2003), Feminism in India
(ed.) (2004), and Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Trends (ed.)
(2010).
Lina M. Fruzzetti is an anthropologist at Brown University, Providence, Rhode
Island. She holds numerous national and international professional appoint-
ments and has taught at the universities of Khartoum, Dar ES Salaam, Helsinki,
ISCTE (Lisbon), and the IIT Gandhinagar (Ahmedabad, India), and she has