Representation of Minorities in Panchayati Raj Institutions in Rural Tamil Nadu: The Influence of Caste, Class, Religion and Gender

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-378
Author(s):  
C. Sathish
Keyword(s):  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Panchayati Raj

The religious minorities are underrepresented in governance at national, provincial and local political sphere in India. The inadequate representation of religious minorities in political sphere has perpetuated their minority status as socially marginalised, economically excluded and sub-ordinate social group in Indian society. Despite the fact, that neither the Constitution (73rd Amendment Act), 1992 nor the Tamil Nadu Panchayati Raj Act 1994 have provided reservation for representation of minority in rural self-governance, this paper examines the social factors that influence the election of religious minorities in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) through the Elite and Pluralistic theory of power structure. The quantitative and qualitative data collected in three districts of Tamil Nadu unfolds the influence of caste, class, religion and gender in the election of religious minorities to PRIs.

Education, Religion and Gender: The Sikh Kanya Mahavidyalaya in Punjab

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-91
Author(s):  
Tripti Bassi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
School Setting ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Favourable Environment

Schools are truly ‘microcosms of society’ since they reflect the larger dynamics of society. Women’s position in society also got replicated in their low participation in education among other fields. This article contextualises women’s education in the nineteenth-century Punjab. It briefly discusses approaches followed by various stakeholders like the Christian missionaries, the British and the social reformers in addressing this issue. Somehow, religious education remained intertwined with women’s education. The article seeks to demonstrate how religious socialisation happens through certain school processes and practices generating religious identities mediated by notions of gender. Established during the late nineteenth century, the Sikh Kanya Mahavidyalaya in Ferozepur started in a local Gurdwara but later emerged as a significant institution of girls’ education in Punjab. It nurtured ‘obedient’ and ‘religiously-oriented’ Sikh girls who then transmitted those values to the family and larger society. That is how it also cultivated a favourable environment for the schooling of girls. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article seeks to explore the dynamics of Sikh identities that not only get constructed but also get established within a school setting. Factors like religion and gender intersect to create a complex web influencing the realm of education.

Radicalism and Respectability in Working-class Political Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Exclusion ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
Mass Democracy ◽  
And Gender

Class, for some on the radical left, and especially those in the Communist Party, was not just an economic identity. It was also one earned through conduct, particularly a commitment to political activism, sobriety and self-improvement. This was, of course, a culture that had always enjoyed a limited appeal; during the inter-war period, however, this appeal was restricted further by the rise of mass democracy, which undermined the necessary sense of political exclusion. This chapter charts the social and cultural limits of Communism in Scotland, exploring the Party’s appeal by focusing on the criminal trials of activists charged with sedition, the role played by religion and gender within the Party, and the changing nature of independent working-class education, especially within the labour college movement, during the 1920s and 1930s.

Caste without a System. A Study of South Indian Harijans

1993 ◽  
Vol 41 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
Robert Deliège
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
System A ◽  
South Indian ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Village ◽  
Bear Witness

According to Dumont, caste can be understood as the institutionalisation of hierarchy, and the principle of hierarchy permeates all relations within Indian society. So understood, caste ideology is uniform throughout the society. This point has been contested by several ethnographers, especially those working among untouchables whom they often described as more ‘egalitarian’. This chapter aims to discuss the concepts of hierarchy and equality among the Paraiyar caste in a Tamil Nadu village. It will show that in spite of a basic acceptance of the value of caste, the Paraiyar espouse a strongly egalitarian ethic so far as relations among themselves are concerned; while there are forms of differentiation within the village, these cannot be conceived according to a hierarchical model. There is a general resistance to any form of internal leadership or domination, to which constant disputes, jealousies and accusations of theft bear witness. Gender roles are not as sharply demarcated as is generally expected in the subcontinent and the relations between affines are not conceived hierarchically. Although hierarchy can be taken as an intellectual device to grasp the foundations of Indian society, it cannot account for all the social relations within that society, which require theorisation of a different kind. It is a mistake to think that people are either egalitarian or hierarchical.

scholarly journals Intersectionality, British criminology and race: Are we there yet?

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alpa Parmar
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Criminological Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Missed Opportunity

Intersectionality is the study of overlapping social identities and related systems of oppression, discrimination and domination. From an intersectional perspective, aspects of a person’s identity, for example race, class and gender are understood to be enmeshed. To understand how systemic injustice operates and is produced, a multi-dimensional framework which captures how forms of oppression intersect and are shaped by one another, is necessary. Although the merits of an intersectional approach in criminology have been widely shown and discussed in US scholarship, within British criminology, there have been few analyses that have implemented an intersectional lens – either explicitly or implicitly. Correspondingly, close examination of the social construction of race within the criminal justice system has been largely absent in British criminology. In the following paper, I suggest that these two developments are co-constitutive – that British criminology’s unwillingness to engage with race has resulted in the reticence towards an intersectional approach and vice versa. This is both problematic and a missed opportunity. At a time when much criminological research convenes around the intersection of race, class, religion and gender, the absence of intersectional approaches and the lack of discussion about the racializing consequences of the criminal justice system serve to stymie meaningful debate and advancement of the field.

Presence into Participation and Representation

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sreevidya Kalaramadam
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Panchayati Raj

Over the last two decades, women’s ‘political participation’ has emerged as a major marker of democracy around the world. This is frequently operationalized through the policy of ‘gender quotas’ that seek to enhance women’s presence within national and subnational institutions of governance. Since 1993, India has implemented a large programme of decentralization (panchayati raj) and gender quotas, which enabled more than a million elected women representatives (EWRs) to become part of the political process. This article engages feminist theorizations of gender quotas using the Indian context. While affirming the need for gender quotas for increasing presence of women in politics, it argues that the presence of EWRs in local governance does not easily assure their effective political participation or political representation. This is because of the ‘social embeddedness of policy’ in local contexts. Effective participation and representation depend upon the ‘relative agency’ of EWRs who continually negotiate and construct their political subjectivities within everyday life situations, specifically three processes—patriarchal family relations, caste relations at the workplace and discursively produced marked identities.

Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisbeth Mikaelsson
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Religious Development ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Present Account ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
Psychological Functions ◽  
And Gender

This chapter discusses how central feminist theorists have wrestled with the complex relationship between religion and gender, so often manifested in the subordination of women. Simone de Beauvoir and succeeding feminists have argued that religious ideas about the nature of men and women reduce, denounce, and marginalize women, representing women as a human “other.” The social and psychological functions of divine gender have been highlighted in feminist critique of Jewish and Christian monotheism and its transcendent, masculine godhead. If masculine divinity empowers men, however, one should think that feminine divinity would do the same for women. This kind of questioning has opened up new trajectories in research and motivated the growth of Western Goddess religion. The great impact on religious development and scholarship of modern feminism is exemplified in the present account.

scholarly journals RISK PERCEPTION AND ATTITUDES IN ALBANIA: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albi Zylfo ◽  
Elona Pojani
Keyword(s):  
Risk Perception ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Risk Attitude ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Gender

This paper analyses risk perception and attitudes toward risk in Albanian society. It principally focuses on how age affects risk tolerance, even though also gender impact is taken into account. To particular interest is the shift in risk perception of the individuals before and after the fall of communism. The authors have embraced an exploratory research, using qualitative data from interviews. By considering two groups of participants, those older than 35 and younger than 35, the paper makes distinctions between risk attitude of both groups. In addition, the differences in responses between genders have been analyzed. The paper draws conclusions on the role of age and gender in relation to risk perception by aligning it with main conclusions of academic literature on these aspects. It further discusses the role of the social environment before and after the fall of communism and its effect on the risk tolerance profile of Albanians.

scholarly journals Intersections of gender and minority status: perspectives from Finnish Jewish women

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Elina Vuola
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

In this article, I examine how contemporary Finnish Jewish women understand their roles and identities as women in a small Orthodox Jewish community, on the one hand, and as members of a tiny minority in largely secular and predominantly Lutheran/Christian Finland, on the other. How do Finnish Jewish women negotiate their identities in relation to their community, strongly organised along gender lines, and in relation to Finnish society and especially its equality ideals and norms? I divide my article into four sections. First, I give a short overview of the theory of intersectionality, concentrating on its possibilities and limitations for the study of religion and gender in general, and for the study of Judaism, specifically. Second, I focus on my informants’ views of the gendered practices of their Orthodox Jewish community, which, by many standards, is a very specific form of Orthodoxy, which could be called ‘Finnish Orthodoxy’. Third, I analyse my informants’ views on how they perceive being Jewish women in contemporary Finland. The intersection of the last two broad themes will highlight the realities of Finnish Jewish women in contemporary Finland. Fourth, I discuss possibilities and limitations of intersectional theorising in the light of my data.

scholarly journals CONFRONT ISSUES ON EDUCATION OF TRANSGENDERS IN INDIA

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
A. Balu
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Cultural Participation ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Right

The spirit of the Indian Constitution is to provide equal opportunity to every citizen to grow and attain their potential, irrespective of caste, religion or gender. Everyone has a gender identity. In India there are three gender; male, female and transgender. The Transgender community is a part of the social order and they have an equal right in everything that is available to all others in the world. The presence of such transgender is not new and is etched in history from time immemorial. Transgenders were respected earlier in the society but situation has changed and they now face discrimination and harassment. Now, transgenders will study in schools and colleges with all facility approving their admission under the category of "disadvantaged group" dened by the Right to Education Act2009 (RTE). Transgenders are eligible for twenty ve percent reservation under the economically weaker section (EWS) and disadvantaged students category for admission.Many members of the transgender community were torch bearers of changes in the events of history even if they aren't specically noted. Their discrimination has been a perennial issue and has only proven to be more spurious with time. The discrimination the members of the transgender community face based on their class and gender make them one of the most disempowered groups in Indian Society. The Supreme Court said they will be given educational and employment reservation as OBCs.Transgenders are deprived of social and cultural participation, are shunned by family and society.The paper has analysed the present educational, social and employment status of transgender community in India.

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