Author: L. S. VishwanathPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Book Description
Female Infanticide and Social Structure
Author: L. S. VishwanathPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Book Description
Between Birth and Death
Author: Michelle KingPublisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804785983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Female infanticide is a social practice often closely associated with Chinese culture. Journalists, social scientists, and historians alike emphasize that it is a result of the persistence of son preference, from China's ancient past to its modern present. Yet how is it that the killing of newborn daughters has come to be so intimately associated with Chinese culture? Between Birth and Death locates a significant historical shift in the representation of female infanticide during the nineteenth century. It was during these years that the practice transformed from a moral and deeply local issue affecting communities into an emblematic cultural marker of a backwards Chinese civilization, requiring the scientific, religious, and political attention of the West. Using a wide array of Chinese, French and English primary sources, the book takes readers on an unusual historical journey, presenting the varied perspectives of those concerned with the fate of an unwanted Chinese daughter: a late imperial Chinese mother in the immediate moments following birth, a male Chinese philanthropist dedicated to rectifying moral behavior in his community, Western Sinological experts preoccupied with determining the comparative prevalence of the practice, Catholic missionaries and schoolchildren intent on saving the souls of heathen Chinese children, and turn-of-the-century reformers grappling with the problem as a challenge for an emerging nation.
Infanticide by Males and Its Implications
Author: Carel van SchaikPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521774987
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 588
Book Description
Analysis of impact of infanticide on social organization and reproductive behavior in primates including humans.
Female Infanticide in India
Author: Rashmi Dube BhatnagarPublisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791483851
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Book Description
Female Infanticide in India is a theoretical and discursive intervention in the field of postcolonial feminist theory. It focuses on the devaluation of women through an examination of the practice of female infanticide in colonial India and the reemergence of this practice in the form of femicide (selective killing of female fetuses) in postcolonial India. The authors argue that femicide is seen as part of the continuum of violence on, and devaluation of, the postcolonial girl-child and woman. In order to fully understand the material and discursive practices through which the limited and localized crime of female infanticide in colonial India became a generalized practice of femicide in postcolonial India, the authors closely examine the progressivist British-colonial history of the discovery, reform, and eradication of the practice of female infanticide. Contemporary tactics of resistance are offered in the closing chapters.
The Structure of Indian Society
Author: A.M. ShahPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136197710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
This book has a collection of ten articles written during 1982–2007 and an exhaustive introduction on the structural features of Indian society, that is, the enduring social groups, institutions and processes, such as caste, tribe, sect, rural-urban relations, etc. The book views Indian society in contemporary as well as historical perspective, based on a wealth of field research as well as archival material. The book focuses on the significance of village studies in transforming the understanding of Indian society and also shows how urban centres have been useful in shaping society. Taking a critical look at the prevailing thinking on various structures and institutions, the author uses insights derived from his comprehensive studies of kinship, marriage, religion, and grassroots politics in advancing their studies. He points out the strengths and weaknesses of these structures and institutions and the direction in which they are changing with respect to modern time. As against the overwhelming emphasis on the hierarchical dimension of caste, this book focuses on its horizontal dimension, that is, every caste’s population spread over villages and towns in an area, its internal organization and differentiation based on networks of kinship, marriage, patron-client relationship, and role of endogamy versus hypergamy in maintaining its boundaries. The tribes are also seen in the same perspective, emphasizing the tribe-caste homology. Finally, the book provides information on important issues like policy of reservations, the reliability of censuses and surveys of castes and tribes, removal of untouchability, growth of organized religion and secularization.
Women, Politics, and Power
Author: Pamela PaxtonPublisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN: 9781412998666
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
Women, Politics, and Power provides a clear and detailed introduction to women's political participation and representation across a wide range of countries and regions. Using broad statistical overviews and detailed case-study accounts, authors Pamela Paxton and Melanie Hughes document both historical trends and the contemporary state of women's political strength across diverse countries. In addition to describing worldwide themes, the book acknowledges differences among women through attention to intersectionality and heterogeneity among women. Dedicated chapters on six geographic regions highlight the distinct paths women may take to political power in different parts of the world. There is simply no other book that offers such a thorough and multidisciplinary synthesis of research on women's political power around the world.
Social Structure and Change: Women in Indian society
Author: A. M. ShahUnderstanding Circumcision
Author: George C. DennistonPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475733518
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
Every year, in the United States and the third world combined, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are circumcised. Whether because of perceived medical, cultural, or religious necessity, most of these parents feel they have no alternative but to allow their children to undergo this surgery. Sparking intense debate, the circumcision of children is a highly controversial and complex phenomenon that touches a variety of sociological areas, such as religious beliefs, identity issues, medical conceptualizations, fear, and superstition. The contributors to this volume comprise an international panel of experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, law, ethics, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, and politics. In 18 chapters they discuss the history of circumcision; document the physical and psychological consequences of circumcision; present the latest anatomical discoveries about the male prepuce; analyze the role of circumcision in various traditions; reveal the medical industry's investment in the practice; describe current legislative efforts to protect children from circumcision; and outline effective, culturally sensitive methods that are being implemented today to safeguard the human rights of at-risk children. For its insights into this troubling aspect of culture, Understanding Circumcision: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to a Multi-Dimensional Problem is a critically important contribution to the growing body of literature on this subject.
The Demographic Masculinization of China
Author: Isabelle AttanéPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319002368
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
This book describes the shortage of girls and women in present day China and focuses on two important features: the sex imbalance in childhood and youth, and the excess mortality of women at various stages of their life. The author analyzes the causes and the processes of a strong preference for sons, which generates discrimination toward females and results in a shortage of girls and women. China’s higher proportion of men than women is a population characteristic that is shared by very few countries in the world. This demographic masculinity is unprecedented in the documented history of human populations, both in scale and its lasting impact on the numbers and the structure of the population. Despite the economic boom of recent years, many families in China still consider girls to be less important than boys. Although Chinese women have become largely emancipated since the 1950s, they still do not have the same opportunities for social achievement as men, and Chinese society remains fundamentally rooted in highly gendered social and family roles. As a consequence, Chinese girl babies who have the misfortune to be born instead of a long-awaited son go by various names, such as Pandi (literally "awaiting a son"), Laidi ("a son will follow"), or Yehao ("she'll do too"). The book provides a comprehensive review of the situation of women in China’s society and shows that discrimination against girls and women is part of a system of norms and values that traditionally favours males.
Castes of Mind
Author: Nicholas B. DirksPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.