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    This article is an inquiry into the lived experience of nine women in prostitution, their feelings of alienation from their bodies as well as feelings of empowerment and control. The focus is on the strategies used by women prostitutes to... more
    This article is an inquiry into the lived experience of nine women in prostitution, their feelings of alienation from their bodies as well as feelings of empowerment and control. The focus is on the strategies used by women prostitutes to distance themselves from their bodies while selling sex and how they reconnect with their bodies.
    This article is an inquiry into the lived experience of nine women in prostitution, their feelings of alienation from their bodies as well as feelings of empowerment and control. The focus is on the strategies used by women prostitutes to... more
    This article is an inquiry into the lived experience of nine women in prostitution, their feelings of alienation from their bodies as well as feelings of empowerment and control. The focus is on the strategies used by women prostitutes to distance themselves from their bodies while selling sex and how they reconnect with their bodies.
    In the consumer culture of late modernity, young women are obsessed with their physical appearance and attempt to conform to socially constructed beauty standards. Adolescent girls are surrounded by images of beauty through advertising,... more
    In the consumer culture of late modernity, young women are obsessed with their physical appearance and attempt to conform to socially constructed beauty standards. Adolescent girls are surrounded by images of beauty through advertising, television, films, magazines and the recent beauty blogs that have burst forth on the worldwide web. This paper is on the use of beauty blogs by adolescent girls of the age group 15 to 19 years living in Kolkata, whereby depicting that there is no escape from feminine embodiment even in the digital world. The researcher has compiled the beauty/fashion blogs that adolescent girls regularly visit and hence has attempted to understand the girls’ use of the blogs and what the blogs contain. This paper looks at the beauty culture associated with these blogs and traces the popularity of these online beauty resources to the renewed focus on the female body and visual appearance in consumer culture that is transnational. The beauty blogs are virtual feminize...
    Introduction In India, in urban contexts the effects of globalization has rendered women visible as workers in public spaces but it has not done away with the patriarchal notion that the ' proper' place of women is in the private... more
    Introduction In India, in urban contexts the effects of globalization has rendered women visible as workers in public spaces but it has not done away with the patriarchal notion that the ' proper' place of women is in the private while streets are a masculine domain. This kind of labeling of spaces creates a sense of insecurity within women in terms of their experience of city life. Privatized spaces have emerged within urban landscapes like shopping malls, baristas, night clubs, lounges opening up before women spaces where they can engage in purposeless pleasure denied to them by the open streets. There has been an increasing participation of urban women from upper and middle income groups in these spaces but here too women are constantly negotiating their safety. Women are aware that their bodies are sexualized and being so are open to use and abuse in public spaces. This creates an anxiety in women, a constant monitoring, a constant need to avoid intrusive attempts onto t...
    This article uses qualitative methodology to explore women's fear of crime in intimate relations, an area until now uncharted. The rich scholarship on fear of crime has exclusively dealt with fear of crime on the streets, ignoring the... more
    This article uses qualitative methodology to explore women's fear of crime in intimate relations, an area until now uncharted. The rich scholarship on fear of crime has exclusively dealt with fear of crime on the streets, ignoring the threat of crime within private spaces. The study conducted in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, India, demonstrates that for women there is a sexualization of risk whereby women participants express their overwhelming fear of sexual harm in public spaces and deny any kind of fear of crime in private spaces. The article argues that women recast the meanings of danger and risk in their public and private lives when they express their fear of crime in intimate relations. I argue that the acknowledgement and naming of the harm women encounter in intimate relations make women reconstruct the notions and perceptions of risk in intimate relations as they realize that their intimates are dangerous and the life with them is risky. Other women participants ex...
    Schools are fundamentally modernist institutions that prioritize the mind over the body and engage in disciplinary techniques to produce asexual subjects. While conducting a research project on how adolescent girls talk about their... more
    Schools are fundamentally modernist institutions that prioritize the mind over the body and engage in disciplinary techniques to produce asexual subjects. While conducting a research project on how adolescent girls talk about their desires, there were conversations on how schools attempt to erase out sexuality through regimes of appearances and behavioural regulations. To forbid expressions of sexuality by pupils, there are rules about selfpresentation and on interactions between boys and girls in mixed schools. The girls enrolled in private, English medium schools of Kolkata narrated the formal rules of school uniform
    Adolescent girls are inundated with contradictory messages on sexuality. Adolescence is socially constructed as being controlled by “raging hormones” but ‘good girls” are asexual, devoid of any desire or passion. Schools discipline... more
    Adolescent girls are inundated with contradictory messages on sexuality. Adolescence is socially constructed as being controlled by “raging hormones” but ‘good girls” are asexual, devoid of any desire or passion. Schools discipline students’ bodies to prohibit any spilling over of sexuality that may pollute the educational environment. At the same time girls are also exposed through the internet to ‘girl power’ culture speaking of freedom, autonomy and choice in matters of sexuality. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 years belonging to the middle class, going to reputed English medium private schools in Kolkata, a city in India, this article explores how adolescent girls speak of denial of their sexual subjectivity and disciplining of their bodies through surveillance in schools.
    Abstract: This paper focuses on what parents and children construct as risk and safety, whether children’s accounts of risk differ from their parents and the restrictions that are imposed by parents on children to protect them from risk... more
    Abstract: This paper focuses on what parents and children construct as risk and safety, whether children’s accounts of risk differ from their parents and the restrictions that are imposed by parents on children to protect them from risk of personal harm. Semi- structured interviews were carried out with children aged 12-14 years and their parents in Kolkata to look at the everyday negotiations around risk, safety and danger between parents and children. Parents felt that children were vulnerable and incompetent to handle danger in public and there was a difference in parents’ attitude towards girls’ and boys’ respective vulnerabilities. Parents’ imposition of safety rules to keep children away from danger was judged by children as unfair if they perceived that the underlying reason behind imposition of rules was to control and discipline them.
    Keywords: Risk; anxiety; harm; public/private
    In the consumer culture of late modernity, young women are obsessed with their physical appearance and attempt to conform to socially constructed beauty standards. Adolescent girls are surrounded by images of beauty through advertising,... more
    In the consumer culture of late modernity, young women are obsessed with their physical appearance and attempt to conform to socially constructed beauty standards. Adolescent girls are surrounded by images of beauty through advertising, television, films, magazines and the recent beauty blogs that have burst forth on the worldwide web. This paper is on the use of beauty blogs by adolescent girls of the age group 15 to 19 years living in Kolkata, whereby depicting that there
    is no escape from feminine embodiment even in the digital world. The researcher has compiled the beauty/fashion blogs that adolescent girls regularly visit and hence has attempted to understandmthe girls’ use of the blogs and what the blogs contain. This paper looks at the beauty culture associated with these blogs and traces the popularity of these online beauty resources to the renewed focus on the female body and visual appearance in consumer culture that is transnational.
    The beauty blogs are virtual feminized spaces created only for women and contain categories of homemade corrective treatments, personal grooming and images of array of beauty products that
    teach women how to “do femininity”. The blogs promote the idea that beauty is an essential component of femininity and encourage women to take beauty as a serious thing to be achieved to satisfy themselves and not to be done for the male gaze. Termed as “postfeminist sensibility” the blogs depict women as heterosexual desiring subjects with independence and choice. Young women in turn constructed feminine beautification as an empowering as well as a pleasurable
    experience for them.
    Research Interests:
    This article uses qualitative methodology to explore women’s fear of crime in intimate relations, an area until now uncharted. The rich scholarship on fear of crime has exclusively dealt with fear of crime on the streets, ignoring the... more
    This article uses qualitative methodology to explore women’s fear of crime in intimate relations, an area until now uncharted. The rich scholarship on fear of crime has exclusively dealt with fear of crime on the streets, ignoring the threat of crime within private spaces. The study conducted in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, India, demonstrates that for women there is a sexualization of risk whereby women participants express their overwhelming fear of sexual harm in public spaces and deny any kind of fear of crime in private spaces. The article argues that women recast the meanings of danger and risk in their public and private lives when they express their fear of crime in intimate relations. I argue that the acknowledgement and naming of the harm women encounter in intimate relations make women reconstruct the notions and perceptions of risk in intimate relations as they realize that their intimates are dangerous and the life with them is risky. Other women participants experiencing harm in intimate relations do not define them as serious, as they are affected by dominant stereotypes. Treating the harm as ‘not serious’ makes them deny their fears in the private realm.
    Keywords: fear of crime; hegemonic discourses; reframing of risk; intimate risk
    This article examines women’s negotiation of potential risks in public spaces in the urban city of Kolkata. The deliberate focus on the public is to demonstrate that the city has different meanings for women than men in terms of risk so... more
    This article examines women’s negotiation of potential risks in public spaces in the urban city of Kolkata. The deliberate focus on the public is to demonstrate that the city has different meanings for women than men in terms of risk so that fear of rape in the city becomes a virtual threat in the lives of women. The fear may not be linked to the actual violence but to the potential for harm that is experienced by individual women. Feminist scholars have pointed out that narratives of crime and violence have always constructed the city as the space of danger for women while intimate danger within the home have significantly been trivialized and privatized. The focus of this article is to understand women’s behavioral response to the threat of crime in public spaces. This article attempts to understand the strategies used by women to avoid risk within the urban city of Kolkata. The strategies used to avoid risks of harm are informed by women’s class location and educational attainment. This study demonstrates that though women compromise on their freedom of mobility, self-expression and social experience to remain safe, women also take risks to access public spaces. By taking risks like being out alone late after dark, by engaging in ‘masculinized’ activities such as engaging in public drinking and dressing according to one’s choice that violates social codes, women resist fear, contest dominantconceptions of ‘appropriate’ feminine behavior and construct alternative meanings.
    The act of rape demonstrates that women are constituted as sexual bodies. Within the Indian context notions of chastity, virtue, sexual purity is attached to the female body. It is assumed that rape defiles the body and the rape trial... more
    The act of rape demonstrates that women are constituted as sexual bodies. Within the Indian context notions of chastity, virtue, sexual purity is attached to the female body. It is assumed that rape defiles the body and the rape trial decides whether the " victim " is a " deserving victim " leading to the acquittal of the accused. The status of her hymen is crucial to a raped survivor's social status. An unchaste body is unrespectable and polluted and hence cannot be raped.
    Research Interests: