"Neoliberalization" as Betrayal: State, Feminism, and a Women's Education Program in India

by S. Sharma

Overview

This book is concerned with the three-way relationship between neoliberalism, women's education, and the spatialization of the state, and analyses this through an ethnography lens of women's education programs in India.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230619913
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/11/2011
Series:	Comparative Feminist Studies
Edition description:	2011
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

SHUBHRA SHARMA Associate Director and Senior Lecturer in the Women's and Gender Studies Program and Affiliated Faculty of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, USA.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 "Education for Women's Equality and Empowerment": The Mahila Samakhya Program (MS) (1989) 19

2 "Getting There, Being There": Using Ethnography, Investigating Ethnography in Chitrakoot and Delhi 43

3 "When I Say We, I Don't Mean Me": Neoliberal Bureaucracy and Techniques of National Governance 75

4 "We Have to Move from Conceptualization to Operationalization": (Un)Easy Relationships between State and Feminism 107

5 "Empowerment Was Never Conceptualized as Entitlement": Problems in Operationalizing a "Feminist" Program 147

6 "Empowerment Should Be Collective": Four "Truth-Tales" 181

Appendix I: Mahila Samakhya Program Structural Hierarchy 231

Notes 233

Bibliography 255

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

"An important contribution to the debate about the institutionalization of women's education." - Gendered Perspectives on International Development

"Sharma has written a fascinating book about women's education and 'empowerment' in India. Grounded in a decade of reflexive, robust ethnography, her provocative work challenges taken-for-granted ways of doing and writing 'third world' feminism. In Sharma's account, empowerment is less about progressive practices for change and much more about the production of subjects within governance structures. She skillfully weaves women's own stories and experiences into an engaging and informative account of state authority, feminist expertise, and betrayal under neoliberalism. This is anthropology for the twenty-first century." - Monica J. Casper, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University and author of The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery

"Sharma writes a convincing portrait of how education policy operates by entangling bureaucrats and program recipients at multiple levels, often producing contradictory outcomes. By examining program failure as 'betrayal,' she ushers in a new way of thinking about neoliberal development policy. This book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on bureaucracy, development, and gender studies." - Lamia Karim, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon and author of Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt inBangladesh

From the Publisher