Transnationalism, social capital and gender – young Pakistani Muslim women in Bradford, UK

This work was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.This article considers the relationship between transnationalism and social capital amongst young Pakistani Muslim women in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The central aim of the article is to explore how second generation Pakistani Muslim women accrue faith based social capital to negotiate and resist transnational gendered expectations, norms and practices. In particular, they use faith-based social capital that is transnationally informed: to challenge the patriarchal expectations and norms of their families; to gain access to higher/further education and thereby improve their life opportunities; and to resist growing anti-Muslim sentiment. This paper draws on qualitative research (in-depth interviews) conducted in BradfordPostprintPeer reviewe

Exploring symbolic violence in the everyday : misrecognition, condescension, consent and complicity

The empirical material for the article was collected during a project funded by FAS (now FORTE), the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.In this paper, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of 'misrecognition', 'condescension' and 'consent and complicity' to demonstrate how domination and violence are reproduced in everyday interactions, social practices, institutional processes and dispositions. Importantly, this constitutes symbolic violence, which removes the victim's agency and voice. Indeed, we argue that as symbolic violence is impervious, insidious and invisible, it also simultaneously legitimises and sustains other forms of violence as well. Understanding symbolic violence together with traditional discourses of violence is important because it provides a richer insight into the 'workings' of violence, and provides new ways of conceptualising violence across a number of social fields and new strategies for intervention. Symbolic violence is a valuable tool for understanding contentious debates on the disclosure of violence, women leaving or staying in abusive relationships or returning to their abusers. While we focus only on violence against women, we recognise that the gendered nature of violence produces its own sets of vulnerabilities against men and marginalised groups, such as LGBT. The paper draws on empirical research conducted in Sweden in 2003. Sweden is an interesting case study because despite its progressive gender equality policies, there has been no marked decrease in violence towards women by men.PostprintPeer reviewe

The postsocialist ‘missing other’ of transnational feminism?

No abstract availabl

Reconstructing the history of women's participation in the nationalist movement in India, 1905-1945

The nationalist struggle in India against British colonial rule brought about the political mobilisation of both men and women. The nationalist leaders required the participation of women in the nationalist movement because the movement's importance and success was dependent on women's contribution to and involvement in it. While the existing research has contributed to my understanding of women's interaction with political life in India, this study attempts to reconstruct the dominant interpretations on women's political involvement. In doing so, it deconstructs concepts such as 'active', 'private', 'public' and 'political'. The argument in this thesis is shaped through three inter-related themes. First, it problematises women's emergence into the public sphere from a purdah-bound domestic existence. Secondly, it locates the domestic as an equally important site of nationalist activities as the public sphere. Thirdly, in the light of the above themes, it is suggested that dichotomous concepts such as public/private do not help to explain the interaction between these spheres, which facilitated the complex process of women's emergence in the public sphere. Moreover, the associated concepts of political/apolitical do not take into account women's political contributions from within the domestic sphere. Within the domestic sphere, women's nationalist identities were continuously re-negotiated to accommodate values of ancient Indian culture and the new Western influences. These identities shifted from an educated domestic woman to a nonviolent and non-antagonistic public woman to a public woman aware of challenging Western ideas, yet primarily confined to the domestic sphere. The nationalist movement also served as an important vehicle for encouraging middle-class women to engage in activities and to adopt new role models. The representations of women constructed by the nationalist project enabled women to play a political role through the avenues they opened, in both the public and domestic domains. However, women's political past and their varied contribution to the struggle was not effective in undermining gender inequalities or improving their status in society. The ideas in this historical study are shaped primarily through oral narratives and Hindi vernacular literature. The interviews with Indian activists, as a non-Western researcher, made me aware of the negotiable category 'Other'. Official and unofficial sources provided an initial framework for the study of this historical period

Nationalist memories: interviewing Indian middle class nationalist women

This article explores the difficult terrain of documenting personal testimonies as a non-western researcher. My respondents were ordinary middle class women whose nationalist activities had not been documented before. The process of conducting the interviews made me aware of the significance of the family context, where my identity was continuously negotiated both by the respondents and their extended family. I was simultaneously positioned both as an 'outsider' and an 'insider' in these interviews. I also realised that recovering and interpreting respondent's memories of the nationalist movement raised issues of the construction of self and subjectivity. The ways in which respondents perceived their activities within the domestic sphere challenged the constructed historical knowledge, which associated only the 'public' as 'political'

Negotiating otherness: dilemmas of a non-Western researcher in the Indian sub-continent

This paper focuses on certain methodological issues that arose while interviewing Indian women activists in Uttar Pradesh, a state of North India. These activists had actively contributed to the anti-colonial struggle from 1920 till India's independence in 1947. This paper addresses two key issues. Firstly, the category 'Other' was not a fixed category. Its meaning was continuously negotiable, both, in my relationship with respondents and in terms of what I understood to be feminist methodology. Moreover, in the Indian context it was difficult to follow the precepts of what I understood to be feminist methodology because I could not write about the respondent's experiences by using their own language. At the same time, present feminist concepts such as gender-equality, oppression and consciousness had little meaning for women born at the turn of the century. Secondly, there were dilemmas around interviewing Indian women which made me aware of issues of class, religion, gender and generation. This paper is divided in three main sections. The first section focuses on other sources of evidence such as official and unofficial records, newspapers and magazines which provide the initial framework as well as help to locate the historical context of any research. However, they have to be studied in conjunction with oral narratives, which provide the crucial link between all the other sources of evidence. The second section deals with the dilemmas of 'Otherness' and the third section focuses on the dilemmas that arose while conducting interviews