South Asia Women in the Field: Readings

Reading List for meeting on  4 May 2023 on Family Relations

 Family relations and normalising women in the field

How do we negotiate our familial and professional relationships while in the field? Can the private and the professional self truly be separate, even when far away from home? What can be done differently in planning and organising fieldwork to make it more inclusive for women with small children? What are the provisions to make women feel more comfortable to participate in fieldwork? How central is fieldwork to our work? What and who is excluded with a heavy focus on fieldwork for primary data collection?

For background on the discussion topics, please feel free to read the following suggested readings:

DE SILVA, Menusha, & GANDHI, Kanchan.(2019). “Daughter” as a positionality and the gendered politics of taking parents into the field. Area, 51(4), 662-669. 

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3030/

Hope, J, C Lemanski, T Bastia, N Isabella Moeller, P Meth & G Williams (2019) Viewpoint: Childcare and academia: an intervention. International Development doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2019.40 

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/157492/7/Childcare_and_academia_viewpoint_IDPR_accepted_version.pdf

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/idpr.2019.40

Kunze, Isabelle, and Martina Padmanabhan. “DISCOVERING POSITIONALITIES IN THE COUNTRYSIDE: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON DOING FIELDWORK IN SOUTH INDIA.” Erdkunde 68, no. 4 (2014): 277–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24365248. 

Discovering positionalities in the countryside: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24365248#metadata_info_tab_contents

Methodological insights into doing fieldwork in South India