Political Economy of Production and Reproduction

by Chowdhry, Prem

• ISBN13: 9780198067702
• ISBN10: 0198067704
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In post-colonial India, the process of political democratization and radically altered legal enactments, especially relating to marriage and inheritance, have changed the dynamics of power relations. The essays included in this volume are selected with a view to achieve an understanding ofcontemporary north India, along with all its social, familial, and legal contradictions. Spanning the mid nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the author presents a special case study of Haryana. This elucidates how the richest regions in the area continue to be regressive instead of movingtowards the modern egalitarian statehood. The in-depth analysis, however, is broadly applicable to the whole of northern India in sharing socio-cultural concerns.The new, greatly liberalized, political economy of the post-Green revolution; globalization marked by conspicuous consumption; and the quasi-urbanization that rural north India has undergone; have all had their fall-out on rural society. These have led to new class formations, westernization, andchanges in the notions of social status and power relations. They have, in turn, impacted familial, inter-generation, and gender relations.

Author Biography

Prem Chowdhry is an independent researcher and Former Professorial Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. She has authored several books including Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples (OUP 2007) and The Veiled Women (OUP 1994).

Table of Contents

List of Tables	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
State, Law, and Economy: The Colonial Flux
The Advantages of Backwardness: Colonial Policy and Agriculture in Haryana	p. 3
Jat Domination in South-east Punjab: Socio-economic Basis of Jat Politics in a Punjab District	p. 35
Contours of Communalism: Religion, Caste, and Identity in South-east Punjab	p. 60
Contesting Claims and Counter-claims: Questions of the Inheritance and Sexuality of Widows in a Colonial State	p. 99
Fluctuating Fortunes of Wives: Creeping Rigidity in Inter-caste Marriages in the Colonial Period	p. 120
Caste, Community, and Gender: The Post-colonial Constraints
High Participation and Low Evaluation: Women and Work in Rural Haryana	p. 157
Persistence of a Custom: Cultural Centrality of Ghunghat	p. 195
Ideology, Culture, and Hierarchy: Expenditure-Consumption Patterns in Rural Households	p. 221
A Matter of Two Shares: A Daughter's Claim to Patrilineal Property in Rural North India	p. 259
Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India	p. 296
Caste Panchayats and the Policing of Marriage in Haryana: Enforcing Kinship and Territorial Exogamy	p. 326
'First our Jobs then our Girls': The Dominant Caste Perceptions on the 'Rising' Dalits	p. 369
Index	p. 413
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