Heidelberg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2001. / Dateiformat: tgz, Dateien im PDF-Format. - Erscheinungsjahr auf der Haupttitels.: 2000.

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Almost seventy-five percent of India's one billion people live in villages. Until recently, most of the villages were fairly isolated from external media influence. As these villages continued to modernize and gain access to services once thought to be limited to an urban environment, basic human needs began to change. Television, which used to be thought of as a luxury, has in the past 10--15 years become perceived as a necessity. Rural Maharashtrian villages have suddenly been propelled into the electronic information age. These societies that used to be defined by their own oral traditions and stories are now more than ever being structured and reorganized through television. / The research question centers on the role of television in rural life, and the influence it has had on the social, economic and political landscape of the village. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation a picture emerged of television's role in the process of social change at the village level. The physical presence of television and the content of the medium both contribute to the restructuring of human relationships within village life. / The data suggest that television influences certain processes of social change, some of which include: consumerism, democratization, changing gender and age relations, linguistic hegemony, access to information and the entrepreneurial base. In addition, television has restructured the concept of time within the village community. The data also illustrate that village children are unaware of what life was like before the arrival of television. Villagers have become accustomed to their daily dosage of soap operas, movies, game shows and music programs. Rural Maharashtrians are increasingly becoming active participants in the "global village."

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In India, the Hindu Succession Rights Act of 1956 allows the widow, the daughters, alongside the sons of the deceased senior male, to claim an equal share in familial property. By giving inheritance rights to daughters and widows, and not exclusively to sons, this Act proposes a radically different organization of the ideal patrilineal household, commonly referred to as "the Hindu joint family". The Act initiates a transformation of Hindu women's status through their rights to property, which implies the transformation of women's rights and duties in India. / Drawing on the analysis made during an extensive fieldwork period in a rural community and case studies in Pune tribunals, this thesis shows that women generally know that they have some rights to their father's and husband's property. However, for various reasons, they do not see any advantage in claiming their inheritance rights. Women often find it difficult to reconcile claiming rights with their duties as daughters (or daughters-in-law) and the social restrictions associated with widowhood. In addition, the complex relationships with the state bureaucracy often prevent them from their right to access property. In that context, before choosing a forum of justice, most women (and men) will first opt for conflict avoidance. / This socio-legal ethnography of women's succession rights, in the state of Maharashtra, is an anthropological contribution to the study of the dynamics of social cohesion in an environment where legal pluralism is itself in transition.

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Thesis advisor: Prasannan Parthasarathi / After Indian independence in 1947, longstanding regional movements centered on language pushed forward the demands for the reorganization of the British state structure along linguistic lines. One of the most vocal regional movements in the 1950s was the Samyukta Maharashtra, or United Maharashtra movement. This dissertation argues that the development of sound films, or talkies as they were popularly described, were critical for the creation of Marathi regional political movements. In 1932 the Prabhat Film Company released the first Marathi talkie, Ayodhyecha Raja. For the next three decades, with a lull during World War II, Marathi filmmakers released films that put forward a vision of the Marathi speakers as a people, connected to the land of Maharashtra. Films, by reaching the sizable illiterate population of the region, were a powerful political medium. This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon the methodologies of history, anthropology, and film studies. Historians of twentieth century India have not used film extensively, yet it is a cultural medium that has important social and political ramifications. Given the lack of historical research carried out on films in South Asia, I use various methods to shed light on the formation of a Marathi regional consciousness. Between 1930 and 1960, Marathi regional consciousness shifted from an elite literary sphere to a popular sphere. A Marathi consciousness, which was once largely the terrain of the intellectual elite, became, through the medium of film, the possession of a broad Marathi public. This study uses popular culture to examine the region’s social and political history during one of the most politically tumultuous times of the twentieth century. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

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