GENDERING MATERIAL CULTURE: Representations and Practice

This book re-examines some of the theoretical debates centring on culture and its manifestations in the material world; that is also perceived as gendered. The papers presented here examine the variety of manifestations of the concepts of materialism and take a critical look at the notion of an ‘object’, showing that ‘object’ is a manifestation and a construct, both symbolic and rooted in praxis. The body itself, as well as various acts and actions – songs, dance and folklore – have their own rationale of being material and gendered. The material can form a signifier for negotiation of space and contestation of authority as well as a tool to contest social inequality.
The papers describe different cultures, historical contexts and cover a wide range of what is meant by material, culture and gender. The range of topics is wide from devdasis to school textbooks, from folk songs, crafts, fashion and dance to prehistoric finds and museums. The approaches are mostly phenomenological, historical and symbolic.
The book will be of immense interest to scholars and students of gender, anthropology, sociology, museum studies and cultural studies. It may also engage the attention of the historians, the political scientists and prove interesting to the lay reader as well.

Subhadra Mitra Channa is a professor at the University of Delhi, where she teaches social and cultural anthropology. Her specializations have been on gender, caste and marginalization in South Asian society, but she also has interest in the fields of environmental studies and anthropological theory. She has held many international fellowships such as Fulbright and Charles Wallace and has been a visiting professor to the Maison de Sciences L’Homme in Paris and to the University of South Carolina as a scholar-in-residence (Fulbright programme). She is at present the Chair of the Commission on the Anthropology of Women of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) and editor of Indian Anthropologist besides being on the editorial board of several national and international journals. She was also the recipient of the S.C. Roy Memorial Gold Medal for her contribution to cultural anthropology, from the Asiatic Society. She is the author of four books (two edited)and more than fifty scholarly papers and her works have been translated into Japanese and Polish languages also.

Kamal K. Misra is Professor of Anthropology at the Central University of Hyderabad and is currently on deputation to the Government of India as Director of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal. He is also holding the additional charge of Director, Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata. Dr Misra’s research interests include environmental anthropology, anthropological linguistics, theory in anthropology and museum anthropology. He is the editor of Humankind and Journal of Anthropological Survey of India, and is also on the editorial advisory boards of several professional journals.