Madhok, Sumi
Dr Sumi Madhok
|
Department
|
Position held
|
|
Gender Institute
|
Lecturer in Transnational Gender Studies
|
|
|
|
|
Experience keywords:
South Asian politics; postcoloniality; transnational gender analysis; feminist social and political theory, particularly of autonomy; developmentalism; agency and human rights; vernacular rights cultures; citizenship
|
|
My current research focuses on two questions: how to think about agency in ostensibly oppressive contexts and how to make sense of rights politics of development and citizenship outside of the West. In order to think about this question, I have proposed the framework of 'vernacular rights cultures'.
My research on agency in oppressive contexts is a philosophical and empirical enquiry into the actual processes of personal transformation that individuals, particularly women, undergo within oppressive social contexts as a result of their contact with 'modernity' and its accompanying ideas of individuation, autonomy and individual rights.
In this research, I look at how very poor, rural women negotiate development discourses, construct collective identities and develop critical perspectives on the world in which they live, putting forward an ethnographic account of how development discourses and strategies are introduced in particular social contexts and the ways in which they are reworked, transformed and the new subjectivities that are formed as a result of these engagements. In addition to it being a work on gendered political modernity and development in South Asia, this research is also an exercise in comparative feminist political theory. It examines the nature and limits of the application of western-derived social, political and feminist theories in non-western societies and demonstrates what these can do for people thinking about modernity in South Asia.
My research on 'vernacular rights cultures' seeks to present a genealogy of rights discourses and practices in South Asia. It aims to provide a detailed and a 'grounded' understanding of the historical and contemporary articulation and practices of rights in the region and attends to the political cultures created by these rights discourses including new forms of subjectivities and subjection. The ethnographic study documents the contemporary use of rights language particularly by women members of grassroots citizenship movements in India and Pakistan to demand rights to land, employment, food, public information and democratic accountability from the State and by members of lower caste groups to demand recognition from social groups occupying high caste status.
|
|
|
Countries and regions to which research relates:
South Asia, India in particular
|
Languages: Hindi [Spoken: Fluent, Written: Fluent]; Urdu [Spoken: Intermediate, Written: Basic]
|
Media experience:
Radio
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following references are sourced from LSE Research Online|. References that are linked lead to the full text.
Madhok, Sumi and Phillips, Anne and Wilson, Kalpana, (eds.) (2013) Gender, agency and coercion. Palgrave MacMillan, London, UK. ISBN 9780230300323 Madhok, Sumi (2013) Action, agency, coercion: reformatting agency for oppressive contexts. In: Madhok, Sumi and Phillips, Anne and Wilson, Kalpana, (eds.) Gender, agency and coercion. Palgrave MacMillan, London, UK, pp. 102-121. ISBN 9780230300323 Madhok, Sumi (2012) Rethinking agency: developmentalism, gender and rights. Routledge India, New Delhi, India. ISBN 9780415811927 Madhok, Sumi and Rai, Shirin, M. (2012) Agency, injury, and transgressive politics in neoliberal times. Signs, 37 (3). pp. 645-669. ISSN 0097-9740 Madhok, Sumi (2010) "Rights talk" and the feminist movement in India. In: Roces, Mina and Edwards, Louise, (eds.) Women's movements in Asia: feminisms and transnational activism. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 224-242. ISBN 9780415487030 Madhok, Sumi (2010) Poverty, entitlement and citizenship: vernacular rights cultures in Southern Asia. In: Chant, Sylvia, (ed.) The international handbook on gender and poverty. Edward Elgar, London, UK. ISBN 978184844334 Madhok, Sumi (2007) Autonomy, gendered subordination and transcultural dialogue. Journal of global ethics, 3 (3). pp. 335-357. ISSN 1744-9626 Madhok, Sumi (2005) Autonomy and human rights. In: Van Den Anker, Christine and Smith, Rhona K., (eds.) The essential guide to human rights. Hodder Arnold, London, UK. Madhok, Sumi (2004) Heteronomous women? Hidden assumptions in the demography of women. In: Unnithan-Kumar, Maya, (ed.) Reproductive change, medicine and the state: ethnographic explorations of agency in child bearing. Bergahn Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 223-244. Madhok, Sumi (2003) A "limited women’s empowerment": politics, the state, and development in north west India. Women’s studies quarterly, special issue, "Women and development: rethinking policy and reconceptualising practice", 31 (3 & 4). pp. 154-173. ISSN 1934-1520
LSE Research Online is the primary resource for references to publications. For queries or updates please email the LSE Research Online team at lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk|.
|
|
|
|
Browse the Experts Directory:
|
Collection of LSE research outputs
Service providing unique access
to LSE's expertise
[access restricted to staff]
Short articles about LSE research
|