Katy Gardner
Biographic Data
| ID | 110367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katy Gardner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katy |
| FAMILY NAME | Gardner |
| SIGNATURE | GARDNER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5608-7585 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 768 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Intimate Extractions
Based on qualitative research on marital problems in Dhaka, this article uses the term 'intimate extractions' as a lens to explain the relationship between escalating levels of demand dowry and neoliberal development in Bangladesh. Evidence from across Bangladesh shows that demands for cash made by husbands, accompanied by threats of violence or divorce, are on the rise. Building on gendered theories of contemporary capitalist development and fem…
Lost and Abandoned
This article builds upon work which aims to 'de-exceptionalise' displacement [Cabot and Ramsey, 2021. Deexceptionalizing Displacement: An Introduction. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 12(3):286-299] by describing two hitherto unresearched examples of 'unexceptional' displacement. Both involve abandonment and going missing, and both throw light on the ways in which gender, space and emplacement…
Cool Yourself and Be Strong
Building on Andrea Pia's notion of the ethical fix, this article shows how emotional fixes are used to bring emotions into balance at a feminist nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Promoting a noninterventionist stance in which its advisers do not directly tell their clients what to do, the NGO provides legal advice and counseling to women facing problems in their marriages. Emotional fixes include building clients' inner str…
‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic
Dealing with excess death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the question of a ‘good or bad death’ into sharp relief as countries across the globe have grappled with multiple peaks of cases and mortality; and communities mourn those lost. In the UK, these challenges have included the fact that mortality has adversely affected minority communities. Corpse disposal and social distancing guidelines do not allow a process of mourning …
Mixed Messages
The dependency of workers, who rely upon the estates for their economic survival, housing, health care and usually entire social network, gives those that run them vast power. All estates are organized around a feudalistic hierarchy of managers, administrative staff and workers. Between labourers there is further division. Foremen, for example, have substantial power over co-workers, not only at work, but also outside working hours. The training …
Age, Narrative and Migration
Whilst the vast majority of recent research on identity and ethnicity amongst South Asians in Britain has focused upon younger people, this book deals with Bengali elders, the first generation of migrants from Sylhet, in Bangladesh. The book describes how many of these elders face the processes of ageing, sickness and finally death, in a country where they did not expect to stay and where they do not necessarily feel they belong. The ways in whic…
Our Own Poor
Based on fieldwork in Bibiyana, northeast Bangladesh, this article compares the transnational charity offered to known individuals by migrant, UK-based families with the philanthropic efforts of the multinational company Chevron, which operate a large gas field in the neighbourhood. Applying Fassin's notion of the 'politics of suffering' to both types of exchange, the article argues that the two types of giving are underlain by incommensurate mor…
We demand work! 'Dispossession', patronage and village labour in Bibiyana, Bangladesh
This paper critically appraises the usefulness of idioms and theories of 'dispossession' to describe changes taking place in rural Bangladesh, where rapid industrialization and 'development' have led to profound shifts in the agrarian economy. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in north-eastern Bangladesh, where the multinational company Chevron operate a large gas field, I argue that rather than political and economic struggles in the area invo…
Disconnect Development
Introduction. Land, 'Development' and 'Security' in Bangladesh and India
This introduction to the volume addresses some of the complexities surrounding land acquisition in contemporary Bangladesh and India. By interrogating four conceptual issues concerning current land expropriation, we seek to develop some common ground and to reveal important questions addressed in the articles and beyond. First, we discuss recent theoretical approaches to dispossession and land loss and secondly, the ideological apparatus of conte…
Dispossession by 'Development
In this article, which is based around two case studies of extractive multinationals in Bangladesh we show how the multinationals concerned worked with states, local elites and national NGOs in order to gain access to land and resources. In negotiating these complex relationships the multinationals often found themselves in potentially contradictory positions, requiring the muscle of the state where land had to be forcibly acquired but also the p…
Anthropology and Development
Anthropology, Culture and Society
The path to happiness
In this article I discuss the relationship between migration and happiness via the life stories of members of a Bangladeshi family who for several generations have been involved in transnational migration between their rural home in Sylhet and a city in Northern England. Rather than to seek definitive answers concerning whether or not migration makes my interlocutors happy-as we shall see, the answers to this are highly subjective and ever changi…
Chevron's gift of CSR
Based on ethnographic material gathered from villages surrounding the Bibiyana gas field operated by Chevron in north east Bangladesh, this paper explores the apparent paradox between the corporation's programmes of development and the response of residents who insist that the company 'should do more'. The paper draws upon theories of the development gift which focus upon the ethics and moralities of corporate giving and the ways in which develop…
Field of Dreams
In this article we analyse the discourses which surrounded a Chevron operated gas field and programme of ‘Community Engagement’ in Sylhet over 2008-11. All draw upon ideas of development or its absence, and reference dreams, as well as nightmares of the future. On the one hand are Chevron’s narratives, which conjure up an appealing picture of community development, entrepreneurship and ‘empowerment’, relying upon idioms of sustainability and ‘hel…
My Away is Here
This paper focuses on the ways in which children negotiate complex transnational identities and roles. Based on research amongst Bangladeshi children living in East London in families who maintain transnational linkages with Bangladesh, the paper draws attention to the ways in which British-born Bangladeshi children are mobile not only across places but also across time. The paper also draws upon Katz' notion of ‘emplacement’, with its focus on p…
Transnational Migration and the Study of Children
This introductory article sets out the main challenges that the study of children poses for the understanding of transnational migration. Children are not simply a neglected empirical group, whose perspectives are rarely considered; children can also provide researchers with important insights concerning the nature of transnationalism if the phenomenon is considered through their eyes. Research on transnational children brings to the fore issues …
Degrees of Separation
This paper argues for a more precise and context specific understanding of mechanisms of ‘informal social protection’ in Bangladesh. The context is a ‘Londoni’ village in Sylhet which has high levels of internal and overseas migration. The economic boom caused by the latter provides important employment opportunities for people from much poorer areas of Bangladesh, who have moved into the area. Yet, as our findings show, the extent to which the p…
Lives in Motion
Through a series of ethnographic examples drawn from long term research in Bangladesh, this article examines the relationship between different forms of migration and movement and the life course, focusing in particular upon how the life course influences peoples' pro-pensity to move rather than how movement affects peoples' experiences of the life course. Understanding the latter as inherently gendered, contextually varied and constructed by his…
Keeping connected
This article explores the relationship between social mobility, insecurity, and connectedness to hierarchically ordered foreign places in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Here, particular areas have migratory connections with Britain, a destination which is perceived by those left behind as supplying bountiful economic opportunities and long-lasting security. In contrast, Bangladesh is experienced as insecure and lacking in prospects. Within this context, soc…
The transnational work of kinship and caring
In this article, based on ongoing research carried out in Bangladesh since the mid-1980s and field-work in London in the late 1990s, I take a historical approach to the analysis of transnational Sylheti marriages. By showing how the form of these marriages has changed since the mid-twentieth century, I argue that transnational migration is itself highly fluid. The role of wives in maintaining transnational links is central to the account. I focus…
Edward MacDowell, Antimodernism, and "Playing Indian" in the Indian Suite
Journal Article Edward MacDowell, Antimodernism, and “Playing Indian” in the Indian Suite Get access Kara Anne Gardner Kara Anne Gardner Lecturer in music at the University of San Francisco and an affiliate scholar at Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 87, Issue 3, FALL , Pages 370–422, https://doi.org/10.1093/musq…
Migration, modernity and social transformation in South Asia
Transnational households and ritual
In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide-ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under-investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational di…
Global Migrants, Local Lives
Long-term migration is one of the most important factors in the formation of cultural identities in the modern world. Immigrant communities are usually studied in the context of the country people have migrated to; Katy Gardner, however, looks at the neglected `sending' side of the equation. In the sending communities, out-migration has become a central economic and social resource - the route to social, as well as physical, mobility, transformin…
Anthropology and Development
Desh-Bidesh
This article explores the complex relationship between place and identity for Sylheti migrants in London. Focusing on the concept of "desh-bidesh" (home-abroad), Gardner examines how these migrants construct and negotiate their sense of belonging across geographical and cultural boundaries. Through ethnographic research, she analyzes the ways in which Sylheti people maintain connections to their homeland (Bangladesh) while simultaneously adapting…
Transnational households and ritual
In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide-ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under-investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational di…
Migration, modernity and social transformation in South Asia
Transnational Migration and the Study of Children
This introductory article sets out the main challenges that the study of children poses for the understanding of transnational migration. Children are not simply a neglected empirical group, whose perspectives are rarely considered; children can also provide researchers with important insights concerning the nature of transnationalism if the phenomenon is considered through their eyes. Research on transnational children brings to the fore issues …
Keeping connected
This article explores the relationship between social mobility, insecurity, and connectedness to hierarchically ordered foreign places in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Here, particular areas have migratory connections with Britain, a destination which is perceived by those left behind as supplying bountiful economic opportunities and long-lasting security. In contrast, Bangladesh is experienced as insecure and lacking in prospects. Within this context, soc…
Death of a migrant
In this article I discuss transnational burial rituals carried out in London and Sylhet. While collective identity and reaffirming social ties are important issues in discussing the burial of migrants in Sylhet, the main focus of the article is on gender. The analysis of what happens when Londonis die reveals a great deal about the differential effects of living between two places on men and women. While transnationalism may in some contexts be u…
Encountering Development
Lives in Motion
Through a series of ethnographic examples drawn from long term research in Bangladesh, this article examines the relationship between different forms of migration and movement and the life course, focusing in particular upon how the life course influences peoples' pro-pensity to move rather than how movement affects peoples' experiences of the life course. Understanding the latter as inherently gendered, contextually varied and constructed by his…
Death, burial and bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, East London
This article discusses the circumstances surrounding death and bereavement amongst Bengali families in East London. Based on fieldwork amongst Bengali elders in the Spitalfields area the article suggests that death and some of the rituals surrounding it are rapidly moving from the private to the public domain within Britain. Whilst 'traditionally' in Sylhet most deaths involve the mobilisation of locally based social networks for support and ritu…
Mullahs, Migrants, Miracles
Cet article traite du mysticisme musulman tel qu'il est pratique au Bengale. Les Pirs sont souvent decrits comme des saints Soufis, jouissent d'une grande autorite spirituelle et ont contribue fortement au syncretisme de l'Islam en Asie du Sud. L'emigration vers la Grande-Bretagne a longtemps ete un quasi-monopole de la region de Sylhet, au nord-ouest du Bangladesh. L'A. etablit un parallele entre ce phenomene de migration et la culture du miracl…
My Away is Here
This paper focuses on the ways in which children negotiate complex transnational identities and roles. Based on research amongst Bangladeshi children living in East London in families who maintain transnational linkages with Bangladesh, the paper draws attention to the ways in which British-born Bangladeshi children are mobile not only across places but also across time. The paper also draws upon Katz' notion of ‘emplacement’, with its focus on p…
Chevron's gift of CSR
Based on ethnographic material gathered from villages surrounding the Bibiyana gas field operated by Chevron in north east Bangladesh, this paper explores the apparent paradox between the corporation's programmes of development and the response of residents who insist that the company 'should do more'. The paper draws upon theories of the development gift which focus upon the ethics and moralities of corporate giving and the ways in which develop…
The transnational work of kinship and caring
In this article, based on ongoing research carried out in Bangladesh since the mid-1980s and field-work in London in the late 1990s, I take a historical approach to the analysis of transnational Sylheti marriages. By showing how the form of these marriages has changed since the mid-twentieth century, I argue that transnational migration is itself highly fluid. The role of wives in maintaining transnational links is central to the account. I focus…
Dominant Paradigms Overturned or 'Business as Usual'? Development Discourse and the White Paper on International Development
Using the Department for International Development's recent White Paper on Development as a case study, this article critically reassesses Escobar's notion of development discourse. Rather than being monolithic and static, as Escobar and others have implied, the writers argue that changes can and do take place within development organizations. Not only does the White Paper clearly signal a new direction in policy; it also results both from change…
The path to happiness
In this article I discuss the relationship between migration and happiness via the life stories of members of a Bangladeshi family who for several generations have been involved in transnational migration between their rural home in Sylhet and a city in Northern England. Rather than to seek definitive answers concerning whether or not migration makes my interlocutors happy-as we shall see, the answers to this are highly subjective and ever changi…
We demand work! 'Dispossession', patronage and village labour in Bibiyana, Bangladesh
This paper critically appraises the usefulness of idioms and theories of 'dispossession' to describe changes taking place in rural Bangladesh, where rapid industrialization and 'development' have led to profound shifts in the agrarian economy. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in north-eastern Bangladesh, where the multinational company Chevron operate a large gas field, I argue that rather than political and economic struggles in the area invo…
Belonging to Others
Belonging to others : cultural construction of womanhood among muslims in a village in Bangladesh
Arguing with the Crocodile
International migration and the rural context in Sylhet
This article uses material from a village in Sylhet to discuss some of the effects of overseas migration on the area. Studies of ‘sending areas’ such as Sylhet are important not only for understanding the migratory process, but also for a more balanced view of Sylhetis in Britain. Arguing that migration has not led to economic development in the area, I suggest that instead it has prompted ‘migration mama’ — a situation where foreign countries ar…
Lost and Abandoned
This article builds upon work which aims to 'de-exceptionalise' displacement [Cabot and Ramsey, 2021. Deexceptionalizing Displacement: An Introduction. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 12(3):286-299] by describing two hitherto unresearched examples of 'unexceptional' displacement. Both involve abandonment and going missing, and both throw light on the ways in which gender, space and emplacement…
Our Own Poor
Based on fieldwork in Bibiyana, northeast Bangladesh, this article compares the transnational charity offered to known individuals by migrant, UK-based families with the philanthropic efforts of the multinational company Chevron, which operate a large gas field in the neighbourhood. Applying Fassin's notion of the 'politics of suffering' to both types of exchange, the article argues that the two types of giving are underlain by incommensurate mor…
Introduction. Land, 'Development' and 'Security' in Bangladesh and India
This introduction to the volume addresses some of the complexities surrounding land acquisition in contemporary Bangladesh and India. By interrogating four conceptual issues concerning current land expropriation, we seek to develop some common ground and to reveal important questions addressed in the articles and beyond. First, we discuss recent theoretical approaches to dispossession and land loss and secondly, the ideological apparatus of conte…
Field of Dreams
In this article we analyse the discourses which surrounded a Chevron operated gas field and programme of ‘Community Engagement’ in Sylhet over 2008-11. All draw upon ideas of development or its absence, and reference dreams, as well as nightmares of the future. On the one hand are Chevron’s narratives, which conjure up an appealing picture of community development, entrepreneurship and ‘empowerment’, relying upon idioms of sustainability and ‘hel…
Songs at the River's Edge
Foreword-- 1. September Arrival 2. The Lives that Allah Gives 3. Hushnia gets married 4. A Woman's Place 5. The Lives that Allah Takes 6. Roukea buys a new Sari 7. Stories of the Spirits 8. Storms 9. Abdullah seeks a Cure 10 Alim Ullah goes to Saudi 11. Ambia's story 12 November departure
International migration and the rural context in Sylhet
This article uses material from a village in Sylhet to discuss some of the effects of overseas migration on the area. Studies of ‘sending areas’ such as Sylhet are important not only for understanding the migratory process, but also for a more balanced view of Sylhetis in Britain. Arguing that migration has not led to economic development in the area, I suggest that instead it has prompted ‘migration mama’ — a situation where foreign countries ar…
Mullahs, Migrants, Miracles
Cet article traite du mysticisme musulman tel qu'il est pratique au Bengale. Les Pirs sont souvent decrits comme des saints Soufis, jouissent d'une grande autorite spirituelle et ont contribue fortement au syncretisme de l'Islam en Asie du Sud. L'emigration vers la Grande-Bretagne a longtemps ete un quasi-monopole de la region de Sylhet, au nord-ouest du Bangladesh. L'A. etablit un parallele entre ce phenomene de migration et la culture du miracl…
Desh-Bidesh
This article explores the complex relationship between place and identity for Sylheti migrants in London. Focusing on the concept of "desh-bidesh" (home-abroad), Gardner examines how these migrants construct and negotiate their sense of belonging across geographical and cultural boundaries. Through ethnographic research, she analyzes the ways in which Sylheti people maintain connections to their homeland (Bangladesh) while simultaneously adapting…
Arguing with the Crocodile
Blood and Land
Social hierarchy in rural Bangladesh is generally understood in terms of people’s access to land. During the years of British rule in East Bengal, a rural household’s economic and social position was largely determined by this. Whether a household were zamindars, raiyats, or taluk dar had vast influence on the degree of political power they possessed, their access to other material resources, and the ‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 171-82) th…
Households Apart
What happens to families, and the households in which they are organized when their members migrate? Kinship has long been the focus of attention in studies of economic change within South Asia, and as these indicate, we must be wary of jumping to conclusions. Early work in India attempted to demonstrate the breakdown of joint family structures when faced with urbanization and industrialization. These studies were linked to modernist kinship theo…
The Global and the Local
Sylheti pir embody many of the processes which I have been discussing throughout this book. Whilst they have been influenced by what Hannerz calls ‘global flows’ (1992): remittances, the countervailing forces of modernity and revivalism, the establishment of the Sylheti diaspora, and the wider framework of the world political economy, so too do they negotiate and counter these changes on their own terms. Local pir have not simply vanished in a pu…
Dedication
Shame, Status, and the Power of Women
Sylhet, middle-class Dhaka friends told me, is a particularly conservative district. Questioned further, they would cite adherence to adab (Islamic codes of conduct), the importance of ‘traditional’ law, and the seclusion of women as central components of this conservatism. Notions of modernity are embedded in such descriptions: the progressive nature of Dhaka and bidesh, versus the un changing and old-fashioned ‘interior’, as exemplified by regi…
Glossary
Subject Comparative and Historical Sociology Social and Cultural Anthropology Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Brides and Grooms
There is no formal marriage season in Talukpur, but the vast majority of weddings take place in the dry season, when the monsoon waters recede and the village becomes more accessible. Over these winter months minibuses full of wedding guests can be seen jolting along the village paths or across the dry fields. Sometimes one can see a bride being taken to her new household on the path across the fields, the wedding party walking alongside a covere…
The Fingers on our Hands
I was to hear the above explanation many times during my stay in Talukpur. In answer to my questions, people would often hold out their hands and use them as a metaphor for inequality. In this chapter I shall explore local ideologies of status and rank. By describing the ways in which status is constructed and contested, I shall suggest that there are various discourses of rank within the village, some of which are oppositional. One describes it …
The Sacred Desh
Whilst presented by its followers in Sylhet as stable and traditional, like all religious ideologies Islam is continually reordered and reformulated by the faithful. In Talukpur the presentation of fixity appears to be of increasing importance in Islamic discourse, ironically perhaps, since many of those who promote it are now so mobile. This is no mere coincidence: the many journeys of individuals, and the overall participation of Talukpur in gl…
Title Pages
Journeys
To open a chapter on overseas migration with a song about spiritual journeying might seem a trifle odd. But whilst travelling in search of waged employment is at one obvious level different from the search for religious enlightenment or purification, at another the two journeys share similar elements, for both are essentially concerned with transformation, with changing oneself from one state to another. This chapter deals primarily with the hist…
Global Migrants
Dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief as he moves from person to person, Abdullah Meer of Talukpur village, Nobiganj, and Stepney Green, London, bids his family goodbye. After a three-month visit to his natal home, he is returning to his British council flat, his restaurant business, and his wife and children. It is an event which he has experienced many times in a life punctuated by arrivals and departures. Each time he returns to Talukpur, both …
Global Migrants, Local Lives
Long-term migration is one of the most important factors in the formation of cultural identities in the modern world. Immigrant communities are usually studied in the context of the country people have migrated to; Katy Gardner, however, looks at the neglected `sending' side of the equation. In the sending communities, out-migration has become a central economic and social resource - the route to social, as well as physical, mobility, transformin…
Belonging to Others
Belonging to others : cultural construction of womanhood among muslims in a village in Bangladesh
An Anthropological Critique of Development
Global Migrants, Local Lives
Encountering Development
Wage Hunters and Gatherers
Global Migrants, Local Lives
Death, burial and bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, East London
This article discusses the circumstances surrounding death and bereavement amongst Bengali families in East London. Based on fieldwork amongst Bengali elders in the Spitalfields area the article suggests that death and some of the rituals surrounding it are rapidly moving from the private to the public domain within Britain. Whilst 'traditionally' in Sylhet most deaths involve the mobilisation of locally based social networks for support and ritu…
Sociology (34 works) · Political science (27 works) · Geography (23 works) · Law (16 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · History (12 works) · Anthropology (10 works)