Table Of ContentGENDER, SPACE AND AGENCY
IN INDIA
This volume explores the links between gender, space and agency in India.
It offers fresh perspectives and frameworks within which these links can be
analyzed across diverse geographical contexts in India.
The chapters in this volume are based on field studies which showcase
how agency is gendered. The volume examines how gender and agency
are fashioned within a multitude of everyday contexts, socio-economic
processes, policy interventions and geographic phenomenon and manifest in
diffusion of education, decentralization of politics, rising social inequalities,
poverty, green revolution, mechanization of agriculture and even drought.
This book will be of interest to researchers, teachers and practitioners of
human geography, social and cultural geography and those interested in
geographies of gender. It will also be helpful for policy makers interested in
the issues of gender and development in India.
Anindita Datta is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography,
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. With over 20 years
of teaching experience, she has published consistently in international peer-
reviewed journals with interdisciplinary perspectives; served as a member of
the international editorial boards for Gender, Place and Culture and Social
and Cultural Geography; and is also a member of the Steering Committee,
International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Gender and
Geography. Her research interests are in the areas of feminist geography,
conceptual traditions in geography and the social geography of India. She
is particularly interested in indigenous feminisms, everyday geographies,
geographies of care, spaces of resistance and in issues of gendered and
epistemic violence.
GENDER, SPACE AND
AGENCY IN INDIA
Exploring Regional Genderscapes
Edited by Anindita Datta
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Anindita Datta; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Anindita Datta to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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For my grandmothers Shanti Lata Datta and Mihir Kona Dam,
my mother Nanda Datta,
and all those women whose stories I grew up with,
women who were so ahead of their times
. . .
You redefine and embody for me
grace, grit and the many meanings of everyday feminism.
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Gender, space and agency in India: exploring regional
genderscapes 1
ANINDITA DATTA
2 Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic violence: scripting gender
among Assamese middle-class women in higher education 15
RITUPARNA BHATTACHARYYA
3 The power of social spaces in enabling girls’ education in
India: perspectives from Indian origin students in the US 34
PATRICIA M. KEWER AND MARTHA E. GEORES
4 Interrogating gender, property rights and witch-hunting
in Jharkhand, India 48
BASHABI GUPTA
5 Gender and agency in decentralized political spaces in rural
West Bengal 64
BARNALI BISWAS
6 Mahila Panchayats of Delhi: scripting agency within
low-income urban neighbourhoods 77
SWAGATA BASU
vii
CONTENTS
7 “It is better to die than to live like this”: widowhood,
economic denial and violence in rural Punjab 92
KANCHAN GANDHI
8 “This is our area and that is theirs”: scripting the spatiality
of migrant masculinity in Goa, India 106
AJAY BAILEY
9 Watercentric roles and women’s spaces: narratives from
drought-prone villages of Gujarat 120
NAIRWITA BANDYOPADHYAY AND ASHIS KUMAR SAHA
10 Numbers, bodies, love and babies: gender and territory
in Ladakh 133
SARA SMITH
11 Reinterpreting resistance and agency: excavating feminist
counterspaces within indigenous feminisms 145
ANINDITA DATTA
Index 160
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
Ajay Bailey is Professor of Social Urban Transitions at the Department of
Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utre-
cht University in the Netherlands, and Dr. T.M.A. Pai Endowed Chair in
Qualitative Methods, Manipal University, Manipal, India.
Nairwita Bandyopadhyay is Assistant Professor and Head, Department of
Geography, Haringhata Mahavidyalaya, University of Kalyani, West
Bengal, India.
Swagata Basu is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Geogra-
phy, SSV (PG) College, Hapur, affiliated with CCS University, Meerut, India.
Rituparna Bhattacharyya is Editor-in-Chief (joint), Space and Culture,
India, and in charge of Training and Development, Alliance for Commu-
nity Capacity Building in North East India, North Shields, UK.
Barnali Biswas is Assistant Professor, Miranda House, University of Delhi,
India, and formerly Associate Fellow in Council for Social Development
and Senior Research Fellow in Indicus Analytics.
Anindita Datta is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Delhi
School of Economics, University of Delhi, India.
Kanchan Gandhi is Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Sci-
ence Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, Punjab, India.
Martha E. Geores is Associate Professor Emerita of Geography in the
Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College
Park, Maryland, USA.
Bashabi Gupta is Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Miranda
House, University of Delhi, India.
Patricia M. Kewer received her PhD. in Geographical Sciences from the Uni-
versity of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. Her research inter-
ests include human geography and international development.
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