Grandmother, Mother and Daughter

Changing agency of Indian, middle-class women, 1908-2008

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3636431
AutoresAnne Waldrop (0000-0001-7468-874X, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, autor correspondente)
Ano2012
Volume46
Fascículo3
Páginas601-638
Data de publicação2012-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x11000448
OpenAlexW1984708460
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas22

Covering one hundred years, this paper recounts the life stories of three generations of middle-class women of the New Delhi-based Kapoor family. By taking the methodological view that individuals born approximately at the same time, within the same class segment, and at the same cultural place will be shaped by the same historical structures so that their lives to some extent are synchronized into a gendered, generational experience, these three life stories are viewed as voices that reflect their respective generational class segments. In view of this, the paper uses the three life stories to discuss changes in women's agency within the urban, educated, upper middle-class. Agency is here understood as control over resources, and it is argued that in order to understand changes in women's agency, one should take into account the impact of both social, economic structures and cultural ideologies. When analysing the three life stories, the overall finding is that the granddaughter has had more control over her own life than her mother and grandmother. However, by acknowledging that cultural ideologies and social economic structures are not always synchronized, a nuanced and many-dimensional picture of twists and turns in these middle-class women's degree and type of agency over time emerges

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Class (philosophy · Daughter · Family life · Ideology · Life course approach · Middle class · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Upper class · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology