Domestic Goddesses Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India

• Main Author: Donner, Henrike
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Routledge 2008; Taylor and Francis; Taylor & Francis Group; Ashgate
• Edition: 1
• Series: Urban Anthropology
• Subjects: Anthropology - Soc Sci; Calcutta; Calcutta (India); Economic conditions; Ethnography; Family; Family relations; Family studies; Gender Studies; Globalisation; Ideology; India; Liberalization; Middle class; Middle class families; Middle class women; Motherhood; Mothers; Social conditions; Sociology of the Family; South Asia; Urban anthropology; West Bengal; Middle Class Mothers; joint; Bengali Middle Class Families; Tamil Nadu; Bengali Hindu Middle Class; Indian Middle Class Family; high; Pre-school Education; Vegetarian Diet; Joint Family Life; High Caste Women; Medicalized Childbirth; bengali; Young Men; Bengali Medium School; Elective Caesarean Sections; class; Bengali Cuisine; Hospital Births; Colonial Administration; middle; caste; Calcutta Middle Class Families; Married Women; Calcutta Municipal Corporation; Birthing Woman; Bengali Middle Class; Non-vegetarian Diet; families; Bengali Hindu; hindu; Bengali Middle Class Women; Elective Caesarean; family; women
• ISBN: 9780754649427; 0754649423
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315577951

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.