Work

Tracing Indian girls’ embodied orientations towards public life

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Contemporary figurations of the ‘the Indian Woman’ over recent years have been heavily influenced by national and international media coverage focused on high profile, gruesome and brutal cases of rape and sexual assault of women in public. The suffering involved in such cases notwithstanding, we argue that investment in such representations runs the risk of limiting our understanding of the varied experiences of female bodies in public life. Most significantly, the bodies of younger girls and how they relate to public life is mostly assumed rather than studied. Drawing on a sub-sample of ethnographies of younger children aged 6–8 living in the city of Hyderabad, India and employing the phenomenological concept of ‘orientation’, the article explores young girls’ everyday embodied orientation towards public life, with an intersectional framework. The paper considers three case studies from different spatial/cultural contexts and the empirical material is organised around the themes of the male gaze in a public space, orienting bodies in a schooled space, and the lived body in a domestic space.

Source: Gender Place & Culture

DOI: 10.1080/0966369x.2019.1586649

Authors: Vinnarasan Aruldoss, Sevasti-Melissa Nolas

Institutions: Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani - Dubai Campus, Goldsmiths University of London

Language: English

Topic: Gender Studies and Social Issues

Subfield: Gender Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Gender equality

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: University of Sussex