Although feminist ethnography is an emerging genre, the question of what the term means remains open. Recent texts that fall under this rubric rely on unexamined notions of ""sisterhood"" and the recovery of ""lost"" voices. Writing about her work with women in Southern India, Kamala Visweswaran addresses such troubled questions in the essays that make up Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Blurring distinctions between ethnographic and literary genres, the author employs the narrative strategies of history, fiction, autobiography and biography, deconstruction, and postcolonial discourse to reve.

In Un/common Cultures, Kamala Visweswaran develops an incisive critique of the idea of culture at the heart of anthropology, describing how it lends itself to culturalist assumptions. She holds that the new culturalism—the idea that cultural differences are definitive, and thus divisive—produces a view of “uncommon cultures” defined by relations of conflict rather than forms of collaboration. The essays in Un/common Cultures straddle the line between an analysis of how racism works to form the idea of “uncommon cultures” and a reaffirmation of the possibilities of “common cultures,” those that enact new forms of solidarity in seeking common cause. Such “cultures in common” or “cultures of the common” also produce new intellectual formations that demand different analytic frames for understanding their emergence. By tracking the emergence and circulation of the culture concept in American anthropology and Indian and French sociology, Visweswaran offers an alternative to strictly disciplinary histories. She uses critical race theory to locate the intersection between ethnic/diaspora studies and area studies as a generative site for addressing the formation of culturalist discourses. In so doing, she interprets the work of social scientists and intellectuals such as Elsie Clews Parsons, Alice Fletcher, Franz Boas, Louis Dumont, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, W. E. B. Du Bois, and B. R. Ambedkar.

2009 RUSA Outstanding Reference CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 "Given both the interdisciplinarity of the field of gender scholarship and the immense significance of gender to both indviduals and societies, it is probably impossible to produce such a compendium. The editor, advisory team, and contributors are to be credited for tackling a project of such immense scope...O′Brien′s commitment to the possibility of a more-informed discourse on the highly complex and nuanced topic of gender and society promises to benefit a broad readership...Highly recommended for academic libraries of all sizes and for large public libraries." —Booklist STARRED Review "All topics in this wide-ranging resource are addressed in an unbiased and unprejudiced manner, and facts are stated clearly and coherently. The coverage of changing topics is kept current. A valuable addition to any library." —Library Journal For decades,scholars of gender have been documenting and analyzing the various ways in which gender shapes individual lives,cultural beliefs and practices, and social and economic organization.Including contributions by experts in the field, the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society covers the major theories, research, people, and issues in contemporary gender studies. This comprehensive, two-volume encyclopedia is distinguished by a cross-national/cross-cultural perspective that provides comparative analyses of the life experiences of men and women around the world. Key Features: · Provides users with a "gender lens" on society by focusing on significant gender scholarship within commonly recognized areas of social research · Offers "framing" essays that summarize commonly used concepts and directions of research and provide an overview of each area (e.g., Media and Gender Socialization; Religion, Gender Roles in; Sexuality and Reproduction; Women′s Social Movements, History of) · Examines basic aspects of social life from the most individual (self and identity) to the most global (transnational economics and politics). · Contains new information on well-known subjects, including surprising facts that may counter common assumptions and research in areas of study where the impact of gender has been traditionally overlooked · Reflects cutting-edge discussion and scholarship on current issues and debates regarding gender and society

A wide-ranging survey of the Indian sub-continent, Modern South Asia gives an enthralling account of South Asian history. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries from c.1700 to the present. Jointly written by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, Modern South Asia offers a rare depth of understanding of the social, economic and political realities of this region. This comprehensive study includes detailed discussions of: the structure and ideology of the British raj; the meaning of subaltern resistance; the refashioning of social relations along lines of caste class, community and gender; and the state and economy, society and politics of post-colonial South Asia The new edition includes a rewritten, accessible introduction and a chapter by chapter revision to take into account recent research. The second edition will also bring the book completely up to date with a chapter on the period from 1991 to 2002 and adiscussion of the last millennium in sub-continental history.

This compelling account of the author's experience with a chronic pain disorder and subsequent interaction with the American health care system goes to the heart of the workings of power and culture in the biomedical domain. It is a medical whodunit full of mysterious misdiagnosis, subtle power plays, and shrewd detective work. Setting a new standard for the practice of autoethnography, Susan Greenhalgh presents a case study of her intense encounter with an enthusiastic young specialist who, through creative interpretation of the diagnostic criteria for a newly emerging chronic disease, became convinced she had a painful, essentially untreatable, lifelong muscle condition called fibromyalgia. Greenhalgh traces the ruinous effects of this diagnosis on her inner world, bodily health, and overall well-being. Under the Medical Gaze serves as a powerful illustration of medicine's power to create and inflict suffering, to define disease and the self, and to manage relationships and lives. Greenhalgh ultimately learns that she had been misdiagnosed and begins the long process of undoing the physical and emotional damage brought about by her nearly catastrophic treatment. In considering how things could go so awry, she embarks on a cogent and powerful analysis of the sociopolitical sources of pain through feminist, cultural, and political understandings of the nature of medical discourse and practice in the United States. She develops fresh arguments about the power of medicine to medicalize our selves and lives, the seductions of medical science, and the deep, psychologically rooted difficulties women patients face in interactions with male physicians. In the end, Under the Medical Gaze goes beyond the critique of biomedicine to probe the social roots of chronic pain and therapeutic alternatives that rely on neither the body-cure of conventional medicine nor the mind-cure of some alternative medicines, but rather a broader set of strategies that address the sociopolitical sources of pain.