Hello everyone!
My name is Shreyas Sreenath and I am a 2011-2012 Fulbright Fellow in Bangladesh, and this blog is something I have been thinking of for quite some time. The necessity for this kind of forum online arises from the need to have a space to share my ideas and my field work. I have been given the great opportunity to explore the research topics of my interest right after finishing my undergraduate studies. Since I have not begun graduate school, however, the output that I produce during my research does not necessarily have to contribute towards a thesis or a paper, at least in the near future. Therefore, I hope this blog will fulfill the need that I have to systematize my findings as well as fine tune the models I develop.
I am working in a small rural community in northern Bangladesh as planned and I am a little less than halfway through my Fulbright grant. I have been mainly observing the gendered division of work and leisure in a mainland community and a community settled on a flood prone river delta.
Project Outline and Conceptual Model
I am looking mainly at how men and women each relate to work in this area and I have found that there certain spheres that the opposite sex seldom enters. This is because of many reasons, but one that keeps coming up is the South Asian norms of "Purdah" or curtain/veil which recommends gender segregation.
My model seeks to capture the relationship between "appropriate cultural spaces" and "appropriate work" for men and women. I am arguing that it is mainly the relationship between these two poles that generate perceptions around the gendered division of work. I am also arguing that the relationship between these two poles is dialectical, in that they are not complete in themselves; instead, they need the other as a requisite for their own definition. A change in the space (I don't entirely mean just physical space so I use the term cultural space) where the work is being done I argue, will automatically change the kind of work being done and vice versa. Essentially, there are contradictions in the two poles (space and type of work) that are constantly being resolved and recreated. In addition to interviewing people who are working on the field right now, I also plan to interview elder members to get their perceptions on current changes in the work culture compared to their own times.
My two sites are also very different (permanent land vs. mainly squatting land) and I am surveying in both to test my model's validity.
The Focus on Cattlekeeping
The lens I am viewing this model through is cattle keeping, claiming that this activity is placed in an unique position in relation to gender segregation of work and leisure, dynamic changes in productive technologies, gendered control of assets, the construction/reconstruction of class structures,and linkages to transnational capital. This emphasis on cattle keeping should be elaborated in a separate post, along with details of the SDVC Care Bangladesh dairy project with which I am conducting my field work.
Possible Implications
New technologies and market forces are constantly subverting assumptions of appropriate cultural space as well as appropriate work for men and women although not necessarily empowering ways, often deepening the divide between those who can wield new technologies and markets and those who cannot. However, I argue in my hypothesis that just as technologies and market forces manipulate the dialectical relationship between cultural space and work roles for men and women to meet demands of production, emancipatory projects can also alter this relationship to liberate men and women from segregation in work and leisure.
I invite all readers to freely comment on and critique the contents of this blog.
