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2007

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Anthropology

Claremont Colleges

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in History

Mothers And Non-Mothers: Gendering The Discourse Of Education In South Asia, Nita Kumar Jan 2007

Mothers And Non-Mothers: Gendering The Discourse Of Education In South Asia, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

This essay brings together and complicates three stories within South Asian education history by gendering them. Thus modern education was actively pursued by mothers for their sons; indigenous education should be understood as continuing at home; and women were crucial actors in men's reform and nationalism efforts through both collaboration and resistance. Gendered history should go beyond the separate story of girls and women, or the understanding of women as mothers and mothers as the nation, to see these three processes as gendered. The essay argues for the coming together of historical and anthropological arguments and for using literature imaginatively.


The Scholar And Her Servants: Further Thoughts On Postcolonialism And Education, Nita Kumar Jan 2007

The Scholar And Her Servants: Further Thoughts On Postcolonialism And Education, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

The hypothesis of the paper is twofold. By juxtaposing the two subject-positions of mistress and servant, moving between one and the other to highlight how each is largely constructed by the interaction, we illuminate the questions of margin and centre, silence and voice, and can ponder on how to do anthropology better. But secondly, to the work of several scholars who propose various approaches to these questions, I add the particular insight offered by the perspective of education. Because one of the subject-positions is that of ‘the scholar’, someone professionally engaged in knowledge production, the new question I want to …