Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This volume is an edited collection of the papers presented as part of an advanced seminar at the School of American Research, Santa Fe. Margins are normally discussed in terms of a centre but here the perspective is somewhat reversed: margins are not just where the rationalized administrative forms of the state are less effectively represented, but rather practices and policies outside the mainstream that somehow also play a role in constituting the state as a necessary entailment. In this perspective the margin is the exception that proves the rule.

The issue of political obligation has been a central concern of modern political theory. Why should people obey the state? Why should individuals subject themselves to the authority of the sovereign? Early liberal theorists referred to such benefits as, peace, security, freedom, and protection of one’s basic rights, as reasons for abiding by the law promulgated by the sovereign. As the movements for democracy and greater participation gained ground, the nature of sovereign authority and the accountability of the sovereign became the primary concerns. Democracy, it was argued, entailed a limited sovereign: limited by the rights of the citizens and the law of the land.

The idea of this book came to the scholars at the Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS) at the University of Ottawa in the fall of 2000 when the World March for Women was energizing the women’s movement and feminist studies globally. A general call was put out for research papers, without setting any boundaries to the authors as to what and how they should write. The response was enormous. A large number of papers, innovative in the choice of topics and methodology used reached them soon. After an insightful reading of the manuscripts they were sent to Women’s Studies scholars for peer reviewing.

The experience of the women’s movement throughout the world has led to an increasingly critical engagement with legal discourse. In many systems the substance, structure and culture of the law are actively discriminatory to women denying them equal rights. Even in areas where there is de jure equality, the de facto position of women is far from equal because of the way all the actors involved interpret laws. In India there continues to be an engagement with the law, the recent example being on violence against women. The constant recourse with law where the state is reminded of its obligations towards women’s rights also means the increase of state control. Often there is a tension between wanting state intervention since the state itself is the perpetuator of much violence.

An easily accessible history of Indian Christianity was much needed, and Fernando and Gispert-Sauch’s work supplies this deficiency. The work describes concisely, but with care and scholarly acumen, the long history of the religion in India: from the legends of the first arrival of the message of Jesus Christ in India with St Thomas in the first century AD to recent debates about the place of Christianity in the modern Indian state. As a work of study and reference, Christianity in India is likely to become a standard authority. The relatively small space given to the Reformed churches may disappoint some, but then most accounts of Christianity written from the perspective of faith show a clear subject-position, and this work is no exception.

There are many streams of discussions that are going on within political sociology. Development, democracy and participatory governance is one such stream. The nation-state, civil society and social movements is another stream. The ongoing discourse within the realm of political sociology about nation, civil society and social movements highlight the place and role of the nation, civil society and state in the lives of citizens of a nation and the members of a society. In a special way these deliberations are highlighting the relationship that exists between common persons and the state. They also point out to the emerging interface between the common people and civil society and social movements.

I would like to pose a simple question—what does it mean to study sexuality—before discussing Srivasatava’s edited volume on ‘sexualities’, ‘masculinities’ and culture in South Asia. Is the category of sexuality the same within the theoretical apparatuses of anthropology, history or literature? Does it include only sexual ideologies, practices, patterns and norms, or does it necessarily extend to gender relations, constructions of masculinity and femininity? And by extension, can sexuality be understood without reference to the traditional anthropological categories of family, kinship and marriage, and now, within the wider terrain of commodity and popular culture? These questions may seem naïve, but given the ubiquity of the concept of sexuality (like gender) in social sciences and cultural studies discourse today, it is beginning to look like other such categories (such as ‘development’ or ‘capitalism’) that everyone believes they understand, but which are deployed in so many contexts and ways that they have become virtually meaningless.

The proliferation of men’s studies and the theorizing of masculinities in the western academia could be traced back to R.W. Connell’s seminal contribution on multiple masculinities. Connell argues that masculinities are constructed, performed, experienced and perceived through differences of class and sexual orientations and not tied to male bodies.