This thesis interweaves issues of feminist methodology with theories, policies and practices of gender and development, around a central focus on women teachers' lives. It addresses the position of women teachers in relation to theories and practices of gender, education and development. It examines appropriate research methodology for working with, understanding and interpreting the lives of women teachers in Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing on the multiple traditions of feminist narrative inquiry in the field of education, and on the methods and forms emerging in alternative forms of ethnographic practice, the study is a situated one. Lived experiences are foregrounded, and time, place, context made explicit. Interview, discussion group and fieldnote data are collected whilst working with women teachers in Karachi, Pakistan. After an unexpected departure after September 11, 2001, additional questionnaire data are collected from a distance. / The thesis is a study researching women teachers' lives but also a critical reflection on the dominant development practices in which research takes place. As text it constitutes a form of feminist practice in and of itself. It analyzes the lived, and embodied experience of teaching, learning and researching, and rewrites this into the predominantly male-dominated literature and theory of education in development. / In the traditions of feminist inquiry, the study is also oriented towards change for women. Given the stated importance of gender equity, and especially the attention to girls' education of the international development community, the study has important implications for the ways that development planners think about women teachers, and design programs and policies for them. Shifting attention from natural nurturing and caring abilities of women teachers, to subjective issues of relational power dynamics, and to the individual and collective positionings of women's bodies within institutions and organizations, this study places women's lived experience as central to theories of pedagogy, curriculum, educational leadership, and to research in gender, education and development.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Undergraduate honors paper--Mount Holyoke College, 2006. Program in Asian Studies. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-141).

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

The dissertation focuses on the shaping of merchants’ subjectivity in Karachi’s contemporary marketplace. It does this by placing human experience within the matrix of the cosmological value system, driven to a large extent by Islamic moral and ethical principles, as well as everyday material conditions, determined by economic activity. In doing so, it brings together the material and spiritual in conversation with each other. This dissertation particularly focuses on the convergence of Sufi moral discourse and meditative practices of zikr/dhikr with globalized technologies of finance capitalism. It seeks to answer: How do the two seemingly different practices converge? Modern financial practices aim to discipline merchants into becoming economic subjects accumulating capital. In contrast, the spiritual tradition of Sufi techniques shapes this excessive desire for accumulating, through the meditation (zikr/dhikr), molding the merchants into charitable subjects. Being a self-maximizing as well as a self-annihilating individual in the market, the merchant is able to contain the larger structuring of money and moral universes in everyday life. The experience generated at the threshold of accumulation and charity, I argue, gives rise to an affirmative subjectivity, which perceives the unity of existence the way it is. / text

Economic emancipation is considered to be a critical pre-requisite to female empowerment. Using data collected through semi-structured interviews with six (6) women from the Mohajir community in the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, the present study examines whether in the wake of economic emancipation, Mohajir women were able to achieve holistic female empowerment. The findings indicate that while Mohajir women did achieve economic emancipation, it did not result in holistic female empowerment as decisionmaking power ultimately rested with the patriarch because of religious, social, cultural and psychological reasons. The findings also reveal that the study participants believed that ideally a man is ultimately responsible for providing for his family since he is naturally endowed to be the breadwinner. Moreover, the findings further indicate that the need for security of life was considered to be the most crucial and basic of all needs and human needs followed a hierarchical pattern. In light of the findings, it is suggested that changes within the security, legal, academic and religious spheres be initiated so that Mohajir and Pakistani women are able to achieve holistic empowerment. / October 2015

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

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