The dissertation research studies how developmental models of "women's empowerment" gain traction within civil society, and their consequences for state-society relations. Historically women's issues have had a focus on "class conflict" so communist-led West Bengal, India provides an ideal site for a study. The research studies two inter-related research questions: 1) How do calls for "women's empowerment" become developmental common sense? 2) How does this development approach reframe the state's governance relations to poor men and women? The research uses an extended case study methodology to observe the ground-level interactions between poor people, non-governmental organizations, state agencies, and political parties that shape development and governance in West Bengal. Theories of political economy, and gender and development largely agree that development is shaped by pre-existing class and gender relations. India's movement towards liberalization is thus understood to be a product of a new configuration of class forces, where notions of femininity make women ideal "instruments" of growth. The research challenges this theoretical consensus by analyzing the disparate developmental trajectories of two districts in West Bengal, South-24 Parganas and Bardhaman, both dominated by rural class structures and traditional gender relations. While woman-centered development programs have burgeoned in South-24 Parganas, state agencies, political parties and poor people have been comparatively hostile to notions of "women's empowerment" in Bardhaman. These two cases suggest that social relations may not naturally structure development, but rather, may be mediated by other forces. The intellectual merit of the research thus lies in its analysis of how developmental outcomes are contingent on processes of political articulation. The conditions under which development is happening in India today is similarly present in other areas of the world: a push towards markets, a focus on women. As the discourse around "women's empowerment" grows in intensity and mainstream appeal, there is a need to critically interrogate how these movements help remake developmental trajectories in the third world.
Broader Impact
The broader impact of the research thus lies in its attempt to understand how development happens, who shapes developmental agendas, and with what consequences for poor men and women. These issues are important to practice-oriented communities, such as grass-roots organizations. They are also critical for training a new generation of students in globalization, gender, and development.
As the centerpiece of women’s rights worldwide since the mid-90s, gender violence provides an ideal lens for understanding the problems and possibilities associated with making claims for "women’s empowerment" through a focus on rights enshrined in the law. Nowhere has the struggle for gender equality been more committed to the terrain of women’s rights than in India. For the past three decades, the Indian women’s movement has repeatedly drawn on notions of women’s rights to re-formulate and implement laws that address a range of social practices broadly targeting violence against women, challenging not only the institution of the family, but also the gendered character of state institutions in the process. I posed two inter-related research questions: 1) how do state officials and women’s activists mobilize notions of women’s rights to combat violence against women? 2) What effects do these rights movements have on state-civil society relations? Using a combination of participant observation and interviews, I studied the ground-level interactions between women, NGOs, state agencies, and political parties that shaped the rights agenda in West Bengal, India. West Bengal provided an ideal site for my research questions, because it is a space where rights talk has just begun to emerge over the past decade. Concurrently, West Bengal has risen in the crime charts over the past five years, and by 2009 recorded the highest reported rates of gender violence in India (National Crime Records Bureau Report 2009). Since the beginning of my Fulbright grant, I mapped the rights agenda in two rural and one urban district: North-24 Parganas, South-24 Parganas, and Kolkata. This mapping has involved three inter-related activities: 1) tracking a sample of approximately 200 cases that involve violence against women; 2) interviewing rights activists, survivors of violence, and state officials of the criminal justice system; 3) conducting archival research on laws related to violence against women, and major court judgments. My project promises to contribute to a growing literature on the relationship between feminist politics and the growth of the carceral state. A wide range of social scientists have noted how feminist campaigns geared towards ending violence against women have inadvertently been co-opted by Western states' movement towards incarcerating racialized population groups displaced by neoliberal adjustments. By calling for greater state oversight over violence, and demanding criminalization, feminists have inadvertently propagated the state's carceral functions. Scholars argue that in the end these movements are problematic not only for racial minorities (such as black men in the U.S.), but also for the very people feminists ostensibly mean to aid: women. Co-optation by the neoliberal state is detrimental to women's empowerment because the regime of incarceration does not recognize survivors of violence as politically active citizens, but as passive victims in need of therapeutic services. This process not only pathologizes violence and treats it on a case-by-case basis, thereby effacing its social-structural basis, it also ignores the relationship between violence and other structural inequalities, such as access to welfare, work, and social services. My project seeks to complicate this theoretical consensus by analyzing a social context where feminist activists have moved away from carceral policies, and sought to reduce the state's involvement in cases of violence against women. The domestic violence agenda in India dramatically shifted course in 2005, when the passage of the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, 2006 simultaneously de-criminalized domestic violence and gave non-governmental actors a recognized place within law enforcement. Cases of domestic violence brought under this law are now tried in civil courts, and NGOs and other non-governmental institutions have the authority to mediate between parties in such cases. By mapping the effects of this legal transformation, I seek to contribute to the literature in two ways: 1) by arguing against the totalizing relationship between feminist politics and neoliberal carcerality by detailing how the Indian case radically differs from this scenario, 2) by tracing what happens when feminism moves away from the state towards increased community involvement over women’s lives. In addition to expanding the contours of academic theories, I hope that my research will help women's activists and state personnel who aim to make the world a better place for women and minority populations better formulate their strategies and policies.
