Dr Henrike Donner received her MA from the University of Munich and her PhD from the LSE. Her PhD and postdoctoral projects have explored the interplay of gender, kinship and reproductive change in relation to class and post-liberalisation policies. Since 1995 she has conducted fieldwork in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, which has focused on the transformation of marriage and conjugal ideals, medicalised birth and maternal bodies, food consumption and the impact of privatised healthcare and schooling on middle-class lifestyles. Her work is concerned with socio-economic change as part of the process of globalisation and the way class is reproduced through institutions like marriage and the family and constituted through gendered, everyday practices. She has also published on urban space and fieldwork in the postcolonial city. Her ongoing research deals with the legacy of the militant Naxalite movement that emerged in urban West Bengal and is concerned with personal experiences of radical politics in the 1970s.
Selected publications:
Donner, H. 2008. Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalisation and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India|, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Donner, H. (ed.) 2011. Being Middle Class in India: A Way of Life, London: Routledge.
with G. De Neve (eds) 2006. The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India, London: Routledge.
Special Journal Issue
with S. Chari (eds) 2010 Cultural Dynamics Special Double Issue Ethnography and Activism, vol 22:3 &23:1
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
Donner, H. 2012. ' From the Politics of the Dispossessed to the Politics of Dispossession: Colonial Legacy, Class and Party Politics in West Bengal' in The Many Indias: A Reader on Ethnography after Independence, ed. by Peter Berger and Frank Heidemann, London: Routledge.
Donner, H. 2012 ‘Whose City is it Anyway? Neoliberal Policies, Urban Restructuring and Class in India: A Comparative Approach’. New Perspectives on Turkey, Special Issue: Urban Classes in Comparision
Donner, H. 2011 ‘Locating Activist Spaces: The Neighbourhood as a Source and Site for Urban Activism in 1970s Calcutta, Cultural Dynamics, vol 23, no 1, 21-40.
Donner, H and S. Chari 2010 ‘Ethnography and Activism: Debates on Social Movements, Method, and Ethics’, Cultural Dynamics, vol 22, no 2, 75-84.
Donner, H. 2009. ‘Radical Masculinity: Morality, Sociality and Relationships through Recollections of Naxalite Activists’, Dialectical Anthropology, vol 33, no 3, 327-43.
Donner, H. 2008. ‘New Vegetarianism: Food, Gender and Neo-Liberal Regimes in Bengali Middle-Class Families’, South Asia, vol 31, no 1, 143-169.
Donner, H. 2006. ‘Committed Mothers and Well-adjusted Children: Privatisation, Early-Years Education and Motherhood in Calcutta Middle-class Families’, Modern Asian Studies, vol 40, no 2, 339-364.
Donner, H. 2004. ‘The Significance of Naxalbari: Accounts of Personal Involvement and Politics in West Bengal’, Occasional Papers Series, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, vol 3, no 2.
Donner, H. 2003. ‘The Place of Birth: Pregnancy, Childbearing and Kinship in Calcutta Middle-class Families’, Medical Anthropology, vol 22, no 4, 303-341.
Donner, H. 2002. ‘One’s Own Marriage: Love Marriages in a Calcutta Neighbourhood’, South Asia Research vol 22, no 1, 79-94.
Donner, H. 1997. ‘Gender and Urbanisation in a Calcutta Neighbourhood’, Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, vol 46: 1, 1-44.
Chapters in edited volumes
Donner H. 2012. 'Between the Veranda and the Mall: Fieldwork and the Spaces of Femininity' in Anthropology in Cities, ed. by Italo Prado and Guiliana Prato, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Donner, H. forthcoming. ‘Liberalisation’ in Keywords in Modern Asian Studies, ed. by Gita Dharampal-Frick, Rachel Dwyer, Monica Kirloskar-Steinbach and Jahnavi Phalkey, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Donner, H. and Geert De Neve 2011. ‘The Indian Middle Class: A Cultural Approach’ in Being Middle-class in India: Way of Life, ed. by Henrike Donner, London: Routledge
Donner, H. 2011. ‘Gendered Bodies, Domestic Work and Perfect Families: New Regimes of Gender and Food in Bengali Middle-class Lifestyles’ in Being Middle Class in India: A Way of Life ed. by Henrike Donner, London: Routledge
Donner, H. 2010. ‘Radical Masculinity: Morality, Sociality and Relationships through Recollections of Naxalite Activists’, in
Windows to the Revolution,ed. by Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew, Delhi: Social Science Press/Berghahn.
Donner, H. and G. De Neve 2006. ‘Space, Place and Globalisation: Revisiting the Urban Neighbourhood in India’ in The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India, ed. by Geert De Neve and Henrike Donner, London: Routledge 1-20.
Donner, H. 2006. ‘The Parlour and the Para: Class and Gender in a Neighbourhood of Central Calcutta’ in The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India, ed. by Geert De Neve and Henrike Donner, London: Routledge 141-158.
Donner, H. 2005. ‘Children are Capital, Grandchildren are Interest: Changing Educational Strategies and Kin-relations in Calcutta Middle-class Families’ in Globalizing India: Perspectives from Below, ed. by Jackie Assayag and C.J. Fuller, London: Anthem Press 119-139.
Donner, H. 2005. ’Reflections on Gender and Fieldwork in the City’ in Critical Journeys: The Making of Anthropologists, ed. by Geert De Neve and Maya Unnithan-Kumar, Aldershot: Ashgate 165-189.
Donner, H. 2004. ‘Labour, Privatisation, and Class: Middle-class Women’s Experience of Changing Hospital Births in Calcutta’ in Reproductive Agency and the State: Cultural Transformations in Childbearing, ed. by Maya Unnithan-Kumar, Oxford: Berghahn 113-135.