Decolonizing the Gender and Land Rights Debate in India

Considering Religion and More-than-Human Sociality in Women's Lived Land Relatedness

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3363017
AutoresCatrien Notermans (0000-0003-3752-0264, Radboud University Nijmegen, autor correspondente), Luna Swelsen (0000-0003-2717-9373, Wageningen University & Research)
Ano2022
Volume13
Fascículo3
Páginas254
Data de publicação2022-03-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel13030254
OpenAlexW4220882169
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas22

This article links the feminist debate on women's land rights in India to the current academic debate on critical human-nature relationships in the Anthropocene by studying how married Hindu women weigh the pros and cons of claiming land in their natal family and how they practice their lived relatedness to land in rural Udaipur (Rajasthan, North India). The article disentangles the complex issue of why women do not respond eagerly to Indian state policies that for a long time have promoted gender equality in the domain of land rights. In reaction to the dominant feminist debate on land rights, the authors introduce religion and more-than-human sociality as analytical foci in the examination of women's responsiveness to land legislation. Their ethnographic study is based on fieldwork with married women in landowning families in four villages in Udaipur's countryside. The authors argue that women have well-considered reasons not to claim natal land, and that their intimate relatedness to land as a sentient being, a nonhuman companion, and a powerful goddess explains the women's reluctance to treat land as an inanimate commodity or property. Looking at religion brings to the fore women's core business of making land fruitful and powerful, independent of any legislation. The authors maintain that a decolonized perspective on women's land relatedness that takes religion and women's multispecies perspective seriously may also offer a breakthrough in understanding why some women do not claim land

Agriculture · Environmental ethics · Geography · Hinduism · Human rights · Land law · Land tenure · Legislation · Political science · Sociality · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Ecology