In terms of representation, India has made significant strides towards gender parity in its political, diplomatic, and military institutions but performs worse than other countries with similar developmental profiles. While India has several gender-sensitive foreign aid programmes, they need to be diversified.
An Empire of Touch: Women’s Political Labor and the Fabrication of East Bengal by Poulomi Saha, New York: Columbia Asia Press, 2019; pp 319, `699, (paperback).
The questions and challenges of our times have thrown up emotions such as shame at the centre of both social and public life. But there seems to be not enough engagement in the discipline of political science to understand emotions in their own right. The central concern of this paper is the question of the political in shame. Is shame political? How is shame as an everyday emotion distinct from, similar to, or constitutive of the shame as political? The paper tries to engage with the emotion theory and bring out the characteristics of shame both as an emotional as well as political concept. Shame instances from the Indian politicalscape are used. It has been argued that shame is a moral emotion. Shame is political (repository of power), localised (experienced in the immediate), learnt (acquired through observation and habit formation), and social (exists through externalities, not as something that is limited to individuals). It is political in the sense that it uses the same language as power and is used rather effectively to create fixed hierarchies. Shame is political in its formulation, processes, and consequences with profound bearings on democratic and decent societies.
The feminist methodology in research is explained by discussing the various strands of feminism and bringing out the distinction between method and methodology.
Bans and Bar Girls: Performing Caste in Mumbai’s Dance Bars by Sameena Dalwai, published by Women Unlimited (an associate of Kali for Women), New Delhi, 2019; pp 242, `595 (hardcover).
Why does the state fail to notice that a girl/woman entering prostitution, either through coercion or choice, is the same one who got married early, never went to school, or struggled in informal labour markets from an early age? From being consistently invisible in the pre-sex work phase of her life, what makes a sex worker so visible in the eyes of the state? What does this reveal of the state rather than the sex worker? The answers to these questions could help us think of sex workers’ lives beyond the narrow debates of trafficking versus sex work, making them part of more mainstream development concerns.
Muslim Women Speak: Of Dreams and Shackles by Ghazala Jamil, New Delhi, California, London and Singapore: Sage Publications and New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2018; pp xxiv + 190, ₹595.
