Topics in GSS: Anthropological Perspectives on Globalization in South Asia
V97.0996.002

Professor Svati P. Shah

This course will explore the intersections of gender and sexuality in South Asia within the context of economic globalization policies that have been undertaken in the region since the early 1990s.  The course will explore globalization’s impacts on gender and sexuality mainly from an anthropological perspective.  The course readings will draw upon ethnographic studies which examine economic globalization as an important structuring context for changes in the ways in which gender and sexuality are constituted and enacted in the region.  The course will explore these intersections by drawing from critiques of globalization, structural adjustment policies, and ideologies of development.  Critiques of these policies will be considered in relation to discourses of security, militarization, and economic development as they impact South Asian regional politics.  While these critiques largely delineate global processes, the course will focus on the South Asian region to discern unique ways in which these processes find purchase with local histories and political formations.  Specific case studies will include work on “sex trafficking,” LGBT movements in the region, and women’s interventions in discourses of democracy, communalism, and legal reform.