This book analyses the significant socio-cultural factors impacting childbirth experiences of women living in remote and complex social settings. This book challenges the notion that childbirth is a universal biological event which women experience in their reproductive lives and provides an in-depth social perspective of understanding childbirth. Drawing on evocative stories of women living in the Himalayas, the author discusses how childbirth should be supported to enable women to take control and ownership of their experiences. Based on extensive research undertaken in remote mountain regions of Nepal, the book provides evidence for and discussion of childbirth in the context of other countries, cultures and communities. Utilising a feminist perspective, this book critiques medical control of childbirth and argues in favour of giving power to women so that they can make decisions which are right for them. In doing so, the author unpacks complexities associated with women’s lives in remote communities and highlights the significance of addressing broader determinants impacting birth outcomes and valuing childbirth traditions to ensure cultural safety for women, families and societies. Through exploring the wide range of factors influencing women and their childbirth experiences, this book offers a new model for childbirth that policy makers, practitioners, communities, educators, researchers and other professionals can use to make childbirth an empowering experience for women. It will be of interest to academics and professionals in the fields of public health, midwifery, health promotion, sociology and South Asian Studies.

This book analyzes the practice of local-level participatory planning and budgeting and its impact on gender responsive budgeting (GRB) in Bangladesh. The book offers a conceptual framework that brings into focus the contribution of successful participatory budgeting practice to ensure GRB – the examination of whether men and women fall under existing income and expenditure patterns differently. It suggests that the ideas of participatory budgeting and GRB should be evolving together to provide a concrete idea to address gender needs. The book provides a theoretical explanation that contributes to the consolidation of the practice of GRB at the local government level through participatory budgeting. Conceptualizing the process of participatory budgeting and GRB in the context of Bangladesh, the book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Development Studies, Political Science, Public Administration, and Gender, as well as Asian Studies, in particular, South Asian Studies.

This book examines the relation between energy and politics in South Asia and explores the geopolitics surrounding energy security in the region. Analyzing energy security and the scramble for resources in South Asia, the book highlights the important role of energy in light of the rapid economic growth of South Asian countries. The book analyzes the current energy security status of the countries in South Asia, their strengths and weaknesses, and the policies that need to be implemented in order to ensure their energy security. Focusing on Bangladesh as a case study, the author argues that the country is geographically important both in respect to its energy resources and as an energy hub. The author applies a novel analytical framework to measure the energy security of the region and examines the role of the US and China in this geopolitical scenario. A new assessment of energy security issues and the geopolitical aspect of energy security, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of energy studies and security, International Relations, South Asian Studies and Asian Politics.

This book explores the development and implementation of the Clay Embodiment Research Method (CERM) with one of the most stigmatized, oppressed, and marginalized groups of women in Nepal: sex-trafficked women. It argues for the use of a feminist approach to such research given the prevailing patriarchal norms, cultural sensitivity of reproductive health, stigmatization of sex trafficking, and low literacy of the women involved. Beginning with an exploration of the author’s relationship with Nepal and the women who guide the study, and the realization that a more accessible research approach was needed than the techniques otherwise commonly used, it discusses the use of clay and photography as ideal entry points to engaging with the women in the research and creating this ethical methodology for self-empowerment. Not only does the volume highlight extraordinary insights offered by the women involved in this study through the application of CERM, but also the recognition that its use requires expertise that can deal with the potential elicitation of trauma. The book makes the case for further study on improving the method’s use in research, education, and therapy involving low-literate, stigmatized, oppressed, and marginalized populations, particularly where cultural sensitivity is an important consideration. A Feminist Approach to Sensitive Research is suitable for students, scholars, and researchers in Gender Studies, Sociology, Health Studies, Anthropology, and Asian Studies.

This book familiarises readers with a new way to treat the subject of gender, foregrounding the real voices of women, their experiences doing ethnographic work, and their courage in sharing their stories publicly for the first time in the context of India. A useful companion to more theory-based anthropological studies, the book connects ethnographic data to what eventually becomes theories formed from the field. Chapters by women from a variety of disciplines – Anthropology, Literary and Translation studies, Political Sciences – transcend the academic boundaries between social sciences and humanities. The book shows how the researchers navigate in the field, write in ways that defy their academic life and work, and call into question their narrative voice. The book presents a space for women to reflect on their individual themes of research and at partially filling the vacuum mentioned above, the silences of women’s voices and expressions. The experiences described in the chapters differ, both along the divide of a "native" and a non-"native" fieldworker and along different disciplinary fields, but they share the experience of a long-term fieldwork in India and the need to self-reflect on the impact of this experience on the way the field is represented, on the people encountered in the field, on the way the field impacted on the fieldworker. The book is a useful presentation of how female researchers act in the field as women and scholars. Filling a gap in the existing literature of ethnographic research methods, the book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the fields of Gender Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Anthropology and Asian Studies.

This book examines the history of, and the contestations on, Islam and the nature of religious change in 20th century Pakistan, focusing in particular on movements of Islamic reform and revival. This book is the first to bring the different facets of Islam, particularly Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented traditions, together within the confines of a single study ranging from the colonial to post-colonial era. Using a rich corpus of Urdu and Arabic material including biographical accounts, Sufi discourses (malfuzat), letter collections, polemics and unexplored archival sources, the author investigates how Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented religiosity interacted with one another in the post-colonial state of Pakistan. Focusing on the district of Mianwali in Pakistani northwestern Punjab, the book demonstrates how reformist ideas could only effectively find space to permeate after accommodating Sufi thoughts and practices; the text-based religious identity coalesced with overlapped traditional religious rituals and practices. The book proceeds to show how reformist Islam became the principal determinant of Islamic identity in the post-colonial state of Pakistan and how one of its defining effects was the hardening of religious boundaries. Challenging the approach of viewing the contestation between reformist and shrine-oriented Islam through the lens of binaries modern/traditional and moderate/extremist, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian religion and Islam in modern South Asia.

This book brings together historical and ethnographic perspectives on Indian consumer identities. Through an in-depth analysis of local, regional, and national histories of marketing, regulatory bodies, public and domestic practices, this interdisciplinary volume charts the emergence of Indian consumer society and discusses commodity consumption as a main feature of Indian modernity. Nationalist discourse was shaped by moral struggles over consumption patterns that became a hallmark of middle-class identity. But a number of chapters demonstrate how a wide range of social strata were targeted as markets for everyday commodities associated with global lifestyles early on. A section of the book illustrates how a new group of professionals engaged in advertising trying to create a market shaped tastes and discourses and how campaigns provided a range of consumers with guidance on ‘modern lifestyles’. Chapters discussing advertisements for consumables like coffee and cooking oil, show these to be part of new public cultures. The ethnographic chapters focus on contemporary practices and consumption as a main marker of class, caste and community. Throughout the book consumption is shown to determine communal identities, but some chapters also highlight how it reshapes intimate relationships. The chapters explore the middle-class family, microcredit schemes, and metropolitan youth cultures as sites in which consumer citizenship is realised. The book will be of interest to readers from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, geography, sociology, South Asian studies, and visual cultures.