M Unnithan
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 55069 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | M Unnithan |
| NOMBRES | M |
| APELLIDO | Unnithan |
| FIRMA | UNNITHAN M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7649-7282 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 54 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Gender and ‘Tribal’ Identity in Western India
Most studies of tribal communities in India emphasise their social, political and economic distinction from caste groups. Such representations are rarely based on members' own accounts of their history and experiences and are thus open to processes of ‘othering’ and erasure. Representations of tribal women are especially symbolic of the ways in which tribes have come to be regarded as distinct from caste groups. Based on ethnographic research wit…
‘Only parents can understand the problems and needs of children with thalassaemia’
Evolving knowledge of genetics and improved clinical care have re-shaped life choices for those suffering from chronic, incurable conditions and their families. Yet the realisation of care requires complex navigation to access vital therapies which is often difficult for individuals or their family carers. In the article, we explore the struggles and strategies of parents of children with thalassemia (a genetically inherited blood disorder) in a …
But It's Not That They Don't Love Their Girls
Recent demographic analysis of sex ratios at birth in the UK has signaled the issue of "missing girls" in British Asian minority populations. This paper juxtaposes the processes of reproductive regulation set in motion by this new demographic knowledge of son preference, with lived experiences of gender equality and family-making practices. Ethnographic research conducted with British Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi families reveal diverse mec…
The potential role of network-oriented interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence among asylum seekers in Belgium
Interventions involving asylum seekers and members of their network (especially peers), have the potential for improving physical and mental health outcomes of asylum seekers who are SGBV survivors
Gender Politics, Development and Women’s Agency in Rajasthan
Rajasthan is the second largest state in the country, with a relatively low population density. Most of its approximately forty-four million people reside in rural areas, making for a figure of over thirty-three million people in the 33,000 villages in the state. Environmental and historical factors especially set the state apart from other states in the Indian union. In India as elsewhere, issues of women&s;s ideological devaluation were not add…
Arbitrating Abortion
The UK's on-going sex-selective abortion (SSA) controversy remains a major obstacle to the liberalization of national abortion governance, and is an issue broadly attributed to a "cultural" preference for sons among South Asian women. We conceptualize how healthcare professionals "arbitrate" requests for SSA by exploring the tension between its legal status and how requests are encountered by abortion providers. SSA is framed in this article as a…
Surrogacy
The study of surrogacy has been important for the development of anthropological theory, especially on kinship and relatedness, where it has contributed to critical understanding of what is “natural” about the body, human reproduction, and the social relationships based on them. Ethnographic work on surrogacy has brought new insight into processes of assisted procreation and kinship debates within anthropology, further blurring the dichotomies of…
Re-situating abortion
New modes of neoliberal and rights-based reproductive governance are emerging across the world which either paradoxically foreclose access to universal health services or promote legislative reform without providing a continuum of services on the ground. These shifts present new opportunities for the expansion but also the limitation of abortion provision conceptually and 'on-the-ground', both in the Global North and South. The collection of pape…
Re-visioning evidence
Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have h…
Critical Journeys
Sensing the Field
The significance of exploring the field in terms of interpersonal understandings also emerges strongly as a focus in recent writing about anthropological fieldwork and knowledge creation. This chapter examines the framework of kinship and relatedness to explore how as anthropologists we become intimately connected to fields and the significant role such connections play in analytic preoccupations. It argues elsewhere a focus on emotion also leads…
Bodily rights and collective claims
This article engages with anthropological approaches to the study of global human rights discourses around reproductive and maternal health in India. Whether couched in the language of human rights or of other social justice frameworks, different forms of claims-making in India exist in tandem and correspond to particular traditions of activism and struggle. Universal reproductive rights language remains a discourse aimed at the state in India, w…
On reproductive justice
In this paper we draw attention to the difficulty of accessing reproductive rights in the absence of effective state and legal guarantees for gender equity and citizenship, and argue that if reproductive rights are to be meaningful interventions on the ground, they must be reframed in terms of reproductive justice. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Rajasthan, Northwest India, we track two dynamic legal aid interventions o…
Sexual and reproductive health rights and justice – tracking the relationship
A subsequent panel discussion on Global Flows, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Ethnographies of Crossing and 'Translation' in the Global South was organised by both the authors at the American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco in November 2012. We thank Lynn Morgan for sharing her notes as discussant for the panel
Challenges in 'Translating' Human Rights
Rights-based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in whi…
Thinking through Surrogacy Legislation in India
As its main focus the article is concerned with explaining the proposed Indian Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) Bill 2010 (2008), and in particular discusses some of its limitations using a relational conception of consent and autonomy. It is argued that two major limitations arise from, firstly, the way the Bill attempts to introduce ‘universal’ notions of informed consent into a cultural context of socially determined decisionmaking, re…
Global rights and state activism
This article examines the changing dynamics of development in India, focusing on partnerships between civil society organisations (CSOs)1 and the state in the area of rural health. Drawing on ethnographic perspectives of CSO work, we examine the shifting meaning of these partnerships for the institutions involved and how they function given their differing institutional cultures and values. We argue that the adoption by the state of a global lang…
Female selective abortion – beyond ‘culture’
There is an emerging global discourse on female selective abortion (FSA) as several Asian countries witness an increasing imbalance in their sex ratios in favour of boys. While there is an attendant increase in demographic and social surveys on the issue, little is understood about FSA as either a desired or contested practice of family making in the contexts in which it is practiced. Drawing on the accounts of feminists, doctors and lower, middl…
Learning from infertility
Infertility is a neglected area of public health in India despite the significant implications it has for the health of poor women. It is also less prominent in social science research due to its characterization as a biomedical problem. On the contrary, as suggested in this article, a focus on infertility provides important insights into the gendering of reproductive identity and the ways in which power is exercised by the family, religion, stat…
Spirits of the womb
In this article I focus on the connections between poor women's migration to a basti in Jaipur city in north-west India and their reproductive anxieties, agency and outcomes. I suggest that, in terms of their reproductive choice and freedom, women's experience of migration is highly ambivalent. Three main consequences of women's migration account for this ambivalence: (a) a shift in gender roles, conjugal relationships and related expectations of…
The State, Rajput Identity and Women's Agency in 19th and 20th Century Rajasthan
Drawing on historical and ethnographic material on lower-class Rajput women, this paper evaluates the their impact in transforming gender roles and relationships in rural Rajasthan. It focuses on the individual and collective agency of Rajput women and the role of the state in the promotion of gender-specific identities in Rajasthan, India. Overall, it is noted that the Rajputs have had a tremendous influence on the culture, customs and tradition…
Identity, Gender and Poverty
Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan
Anthropologists have often contrasted 'caste' and 'tribe' as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg 'castes' are based on hierarchy, 'tribal' society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of 'caste' is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not al…
The Politics of Marriage Payments in South Rajasthan
Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions
Challenges in 'Translating' Human Rights
Rights-based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in whi…
Global rights and state activism
This article examines the changing dynamics of development in India, focusing on partnerships between civil society organisations (CSOs)1 and the state in the area of rural health. Drawing on ethnographic perspectives of CSO work, we examine the shifting meaning of these partnerships for the institutions involved and how they function given their differing institutional cultures and values. We argue that the adoption by the state of a global lang…
Spirits of the womb
In this article I focus on the connections between poor women's migration to a basti in Jaipur city in north-west India and their reproductive anxieties, agency and outcomes. I suggest that, in terms of their reproductive choice and freedom, women's experience of migration is highly ambivalent. Three main consequences of women's migration account for this ambivalence: (a) a shift in gender roles, conjugal relationships and related expectations of…
Arbitrating Abortion
The UK's on-going sex-selective abortion (SSA) controversy remains a major obstacle to the liberalization of national abortion governance, and is an issue broadly attributed to a "cultural" preference for sons among South Asian women. We conceptualize how healthcare professionals "arbitrate" requests for SSA by exploring the tension between its legal status and how requests are encountered by abortion providers. SSA is framed in this article as a…
Bodily rights and collective claims
This article engages with anthropological approaches to the study of global human rights discourses around reproductive and maternal health in India. Whether couched in the language of human rights or of other social justice frameworks, different forms of claims-making in India exist in tandem and correspond to particular traditions of activism and struggle. Universal reproductive rights language remains a discourse aimed at the state in India, w…
Learning from infertility
Infertility is a neglected area of public health in India despite the significant implications it has for the health of poor women. It is also less prominent in social science research due to its characterization as a biomedical problem. On the contrary, as suggested in this article, a focus on infertility provides important insights into the gendering of reproductive identity and the ways in which power is exercised by the family, religion, stat…
The State, Rajput Identity and Women's Agency in 19th and 20th Century Rajasthan
Drawing on historical and ethnographic material on lower-class Rajput women, this paper evaluates the their impact in transforming gender roles and relationships in rural Rajasthan. It focuses on the individual and collective agency of Rajput women and the role of the state in the promotion of gender-specific identities in Rajasthan, India. Overall, it is noted that the Rajputs have had a tremendous influence on the culture, customs and tradition…
Thinking through Surrogacy Legislation in India
As its main focus the article is concerned with explaining the proposed Indian Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) Bill 2010 (2008), and in particular discusses some of its limitations using a relational conception of consent and autonomy. It is argued that two major limitations arise from, firstly, the way the Bill attempts to introduce ‘universal’ notions of informed consent into a cultural context of socially determined decisionmaking, re…
Identity, Gender and Poverty
Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan
Anthropologists have often contrasted 'caste' and 'tribe' as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg 'castes' are based on hierarchy, 'tribal' society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of 'caste' is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not al…
But It's Not That They Don't Love Their Girls
Recent demographic analysis of sex ratios at birth in the UK has signaled the issue of "missing girls" in British Asian minority populations. This paper juxtaposes the processes of reproductive regulation set in motion by this new demographic knowledge of son preference, with lived experiences of gender equality and family-making practices. Ethnographic research conducted with British Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi families reveal diverse mec…
The Politics of Marriage Payments in South Rajasthan
Identity
Identity
The Politics of Marriage Payments in South Rajasthan
Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions
Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan
Anthropologists have often contrasted 'caste' and 'tribe' as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg 'castes' are based on hierarchy, 'tribal' society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of 'caste' is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not al…
Identity, Gender and Poverty
The State, Rajput Identity and Women's Agency in 19th and 20th Century Rajasthan
Drawing on historical and ethnographic material on lower-class Rajput women, this paper evaluates the their impact in transforming gender roles and relationships in rural Rajasthan. It focuses on the individual and collective agency of Rajput women and the role of the state in the promotion of gender-specific identities in Rajasthan, India. Overall, it is noted that the Rajputs have had a tremendous influence on the culture, customs and tradition…
Spirits of the womb
In this article I focus on the connections between poor women's migration to a basti in Jaipur city in north-west India and their reproductive anxieties, agency and outcomes. I suggest that, in terms of their reproductive choice and freedom, women's experience of migration is highly ambivalent. Three main consequences of women's migration account for this ambivalence: (a) a shift in gender roles, conjugal relationships and related expectations of…
Female selective abortion – beyond ‘culture’
There is an emerging global discourse on female selective abortion (FSA) as several Asian countries witness an increasing imbalance in their sex ratios in favour of boys. While there is an attendant increase in demographic and social surveys on the issue, little is understood about FSA as either a desired or contested practice of family making in the contexts in which it is practiced. Drawing on the accounts of feminists, doctors and lower, middl…
Learning from infertility
Infertility is a neglected area of public health in India despite the significant implications it has for the health of poor women. It is also less prominent in social science research due to its characterization as a biomedical problem. On the contrary, as suggested in this article, a focus on infertility provides important insights into the gendering of reproductive identity and the ways in which power is exercised by the family, religion, stat…
Global rights and state activism
This article examines the changing dynamics of development in India, focusing on partnerships between civil society organisations (CSOs)1 and the state in the area of rural health. Drawing on ethnographic perspectives of CSO work, we examine the shifting meaning of these partnerships for the institutions involved and how they function given their differing institutional cultures and values. We argue that the adoption by the state of a global lang…
Thinking through Surrogacy Legislation in India
As its main focus the article is concerned with explaining the proposed Indian Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) Bill 2010 (2008), and in particular discusses some of its limitations using a relational conception of consent and autonomy. It is argued that two major limitations arise from, firstly, the way the Bill attempts to introduce ‘universal’ notions of informed consent into a cultural context of socially determined decisionmaking, re…
On reproductive justice
In this paper we draw attention to the difficulty of accessing reproductive rights in the absence of effective state and legal guarantees for gender equity and citizenship, and argue that if reproductive rights are to be meaningful interventions on the ground, they must be reframed in terms of reproductive justice. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Rajasthan, Northwest India, we track two dynamic legal aid interventions o…
Sexual and reproductive health rights and justice – tracking the relationship
A subsequent panel discussion on Global Flows, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Ethnographies of Crossing and 'Translation' in the Global South was organised by both the authors at the American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco in November 2012. We thank Lynn Morgan for sharing her notes as discussant for the panel
Challenges in 'Translating' Human Rights
Rights-based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in whi…
Bodily rights and collective claims
This article engages with anthropological approaches to the study of global human rights discourses around reproductive and maternal health in India. Whether couched in the language of human rights or of other social justice frameworks, different forms of claims-making in India exist in tandem and correspond to particular traditions of activism and struggle. Universal reproductive rights language remains a discourse aimed at the state in India, w…
Critical Journeys
Sensing the Field
The significance of exploring the field in terms of interpersonal understandings also emerges strongly as a focus in recent writing about anthropological fieldwork and knowledge creation. This chapter examines the framework of kinship and relatedness to explore how as anthropologists we become intimately connected to fields and the significant role such connections play in analytic preoccupations. It argues elsewhere a focus on emotion also leads…
Re-visioning evidence
Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have h…
Surrogacy
The study of surrogacy has been important for the development of anthropological theory, especially on kinship and relatedness, where it has contributed to critical understanding of what is “natural” about the body, human reproduction, and the social relationships based on them. Ethnographic work on surrogacy has brought new insight into processes of assisted procreation and kinship debates within anthropology, further blurring the dichotomies of…
Re-situating abortion
New modes of neoliberal and rights-based reproductive governance are emerging across the world which either paradoxically foreclose access to universal health services or promote legislative reform without providing a continuum of services on the ground. These shifts present new opportunities for the expansion but also the limitation of abortion provision conceptually and 'on-the-ground', both in the Global North and South. The collection of pape…
Gender Politics, Development and Women’s Agency in Rajasthan
Rajasthan is the second largest state in the country, with a relatively low population density. Most of its approximately forty-four million people reside in rural areas, making for a figure of over thirty-three million people in the 33,000 villages in the state. Environmental and historical factors especially set the state apart from other states in the Indian union. In India as elsewhere, issues of women&s;s ideological devaluation were not add…
Arbitrating Abortion
The UK's on-going sex-selective abortion (SSA) controversy remains a major obstacle to the liberalization of national abortion governance, and is an issue broadly attributed to a "cultural" preference for sons among South Asian women. We conceptualize how healthcare professionals "arbitrate" requests for SSA by exploring the tension between its legal status and how requests are encountered by abortion providers. SSA is framed in this article as a…
The potential role of network-oriented interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence among asylum seekers in Belgium
Interventions involving asylum seekers and members of their network (especially peers), have the potential for improving physical and mental health outcomes of asylum seekers who are SGBV survivors
But It's Not That They Don't Love Their Girls
Recent demographic analysis of sex ratios at birth in the UK has signaled the issue of "missing girls" in British Asian minority populations. This paper juxtaposes the processes of reproductive regulation set in motion by this new demographic knowledge of son preference, with lived experiences of gender equality and family-making practices. Ethnographic research conducted with British Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi families reveal diverse mec…
Gender and ‘Tribal’ Identity in Western India
Most studies of tribal communities in India emphasise their social, political and economic distinction from caste groups. Such representations are rarely based on members' own accounts of their history and experiences and are thus open to processes of ‘othering’ and erasure. Representations of tribal women are especially symbolic of the ways in which tribes have come to be regarded as distinct from caste groups. Based on ethnographic research wit…
Sociology (25 obras) · Political science (19 obras) · Gender Studies (18 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Gender Studies (13 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · Anthropology (9 obras) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (9 obras) · Reproductive health (8 obras)