Samita Sen's history of labouring women in Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries considers how social constructions of gender shaped their lives. Dr Sen demonstrates how - in contrast to the experience of their male counterparts - the long-term trends in the Indian economy devalued women's labour, establishing patterns of urban migration and changing gender equations within the family. She relates these trends to the spread of dowry, enforced widowhood and child marriage. The book provides insight into the lives of poor urban women who were often perceived as prostitutes or social pariahs. Even trade unions refused to address their problems and they remained on the margins of organized political protest. The study will make a signficant contribution to the understanding of the social and economic history of colonial India and to notions of gender construction.

This landmark study is perhaps the only rigorous and comprehensive view of the roots of agricultural stagnation in Bihar. Unlike other work, this study incorporates /-/ - ecological, technical, demographic and economic factors/-/ - the impact of the land, revenue, legal and commercial policies during colonial rule /-/ - the influence of rural social structure and social ideologies. /-/ /-/The result is a rigorous, systematic and coherent study of rural economic and social structure within a well-defined regional and chronological framework.

Routledge Readings on Law, Development and Legal Pluralism presents some of the finest essays on social justice, environment, rights and governance. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the harm and risk relating to biodiversity, agro-ecology, disaster and forest rights. The book covers critical themes such as ecology, families and governance and establishes the trajectory of contemporary ecology and law in South Asia. The thirteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, trace violence and marginality in the plurality of families and their laws in India, as well as discuss community-based just practices. With debates on development, governance and families, the book highlights the politics and practices of law making, law reform and law application. This multidisciplinary volume foregrounds the politics and plural lives of/in law by including perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/ or policy discourse of the subject. This book will be useful to students, scholars, policymakers and practitioners interested in a nuanced understanding of law, especially those studying law, marginality, kinship and indigeneity studies. It will serve as essential reading for those in law, socio-legal studies, environment studies and ecology, social exclusion studies, development studies, South Asian studies, human rights, jurisprudence and constitutional studies, gender studies, history, politics, conflict and peace studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to legal historians and practitioners of law, environmentalists and those in public administration.

This volume investigates how, where and when subjects and citizens come into being, assert themselves and exercise subjecthood or citizenship in the formation of modern India. It argues for the importance of understanding legal practice – how rights are performed in dispute and negotiation – from the parliament and courts to street corners and field sites. The essays in the book explore themes such as land law and rights, court procedure, freedom of speech, sex workers’ mobilisation, refugee status, adivasi people and non-state actors, and bring together studies from across north India, spanning from early colonial to contemporary times. Representing scholarship in history, anthropology and political science that draws on wide-ranging field and archival research, the volume will immensely benefit scholars, students and researchers of development, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law and public policy.