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The subject of the following study is Indian economic development. Today it is generally recognized that the problem of economic development is so many-sided and so much enmeshed in non-economic variables, that a purely economic approach to it must be seriously inadequate. [...]

This study focuses on the British wives of civil servants and army officers who lived in India from 1857 to 1939 to examine the translation of feminine discourses of bourgeois domesticity over imperial space. Three questions form the subject of this research. First, how were cultures of domesticity and imperialism intertwined in complex and often contradicatory ways over space? Second, did imperial rule, and the travel that it necessarily implied, challenge or reinforce the claim that 'there's no place like home'? Third, how and why were places both like and yet unlike 'home' produced by British women living in India? I start by examining the 'mutiny' of 1857-1858 as a period of domestic and imperial crisis, focusing on representations of and by British women at Cawnpore and Lucknow. Then, considering the place of British women in the post-'mutiny' reconstruction of imperial domesticity in India, I focus on two scales: first, home and empire-making on a household scale; and, second, seasonal travels by British women to hill stations in North India. In their travels both to and within India, British women embodied contested discourses of imperial domesticity. Throughout, I focus on the mobile, embodied subjectivities of memsahibs. While imperial histories have often neglected the roles played by British women in India, revisionist accounts have often reproduced stereotypical and / or celebratory accounts of memsahibs. In contrast, I examine the ambivalent basis of imperial and gendered stereotypes and conceptualise spatialised subjectivities in terms of embodiment, critical mobility, and material performativity. As members of an official elite, the British wives of civil servants and army officers came to embody many of the connections and tensions between domesticity and imperialism. Both during and after the 'mutiny,' the place of British women and British homes in India was contested. The place of British women and British homes in India reveal contradictions at the heart of imperial rule by reproducing and yet destabilizing imperial rule on a domestic scale

This thesis analyzes the degree of cultural relevance in the Asha Gram Mental Health Program in Barwani, India. The focus is on the role of community mental health workers as bridges between a professional culture of psychiatry and the local cultural understandings of mental health. Processes of cultural interaction are analyzed on a continuum from negotiation, defined as interaction without fundamental cultural change, to accommodation, defined as interaction with cultural change. Accommodation at the level of the vision of mental health disorders was limited while there was an active negotiation that resulted in some transformation of the social vision. Negotiation with communities at the level of relationships underpinned this transformation and contributed to a social accommodation with local forms of relationships. Although, professional and class power were important obstacles to achieving cultural relevance, the Program also demonstrates the necessity to subvert this power in order to create social change.

Purpose: To understand through explorations of the experiences of HIV positive individuals whether these individuals experience stigma in relation to HIV/AIDS and how it has impacted their lives and that of their families. Design: Qualitative study used ethnographic techniques (interviews, questionnaires, informal conversations, observation, field notes) to collect data over a four-month period. Setting: Data was collected from nine districts in the northern, central, and southern regions of the state of Kerala, India. Participants: Shared their perspectives on HIV related stigma (n=49 total). Of the 38 participants interviewed, 12 were HIV positives, 19 were HIV positives who also worked or volunteered with HIV positive networks (known as positive speakers), 2 were caregivers of HIV positives, and 5 were key informants involved with community organizations providing services to HIV positives. Informal conversations with 11 unaffected were also utilized. Findings were organized into four themes. (1) Anti-stigma/prevention strategies such as positive living and positive speaking offered positive speakers unique challenges and opportunities as they were called upon to be the face and voice of HIV (2) Contrary to expectations that formal education which also included awareness about HIV could increase one’s knowledge and subsequently dispel ignorance and stigma, the findings pointed out how knowledge itself is a resource that allowed stigma to unfold along existing social hierarchies. (3) Unconscious prejudices about physical appearances influenced perceptions of HIV risk, and a stigmatized identity waxed and waned with a change in physical appearance as the HIV positive oscillated between illness and health. (4) “Immoral behaviour” as the cause of HIV infection entered into family/caregiver decisions regarding the use of family resources for the treatment and care of the HIV positive member. Gender and social class also impinged on family decisions in numerous ways. Conclusions: This research project has highlighted the need to develop a more nuanced understanding of HIV related stigma that extends beyond the current conceptualization of stigma as “ignorance” or lack of awareness about modes of HIV transmission. Refining current understandings of HIV related stigma could guide research, policy, and practice.

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This thesis considers the potential of using women's traditional folk songs as a primary resource in the context of women's educational programs in India. Listening to the voices of protest in women's ancient songs will not only keep women in touch with the long history of their struggle, but will also return worth and importance to the devalued oral narratives that have been the repositories of women's knowledge and experience for centuries. Education programs that grow out of the rich and varied material of folk songs will, by definition, deal with the issues that are repeatedly raised, like embroidered patterns, in the songs themselves. Family, love, child-rearing and the myriad problems of fulfilling personal desire within the confinements of patriarchy will all, under scrutiny, yield crucial subject matter for education programs. At the same time, spinning new folksongs out of old ones will challenge women to think critically, and with the creativity essential to reworking our cultures so that both women and men are able to realize themselves more wholly.

Risk of HIV and illness are the dominant context in which sex work is discussed in India and there is a lacuna of social scientific analysis of sex workers’ lives. HIV interventions negotiated between global actors such as UNAIDS, World Bank, USAID etc, the Indian government, state level AIDS prevention bodies, and the local NGOs, have constructed ‘sex work’ as an epidemiological category rather than treating it as a social concept. Based on fieldwork in HIV prevention NGOs, and participant observation and interviews with sex workers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in August 2004-August 2005 to understand the realities of the sex workers lives, this thesis proposes research on sex workers, with specific reference to gender and sexuality. Theoretically the research seeks to answer the question: how to understand agency of vulnerable populations and how do sex workers use agency in oppressive environments? This thesis also engages with the feminist debate of selling sex as profession or as oppression of women’s rights. I argue that sex workers actively negotiate sex work and their lives with the means at their disposal. This is done not only in the context of negotiating the risks of sex work but also in the broader context of other needs, for example money, love and sexual desire. While sexuality is a taboo in India, the analysis contributes to the understanding of discourses of women’s sexuality and the sexual behaviour of sex workers in Chennai. While the women’s experiences are closely knit into the global nexus of the HIV industry, sex work comes across as a complicated knot of poverty, desire, women’s oppression, love, cooption, and motherhood.