Skip to main content

Necessity of New Theorizing in the time of Neoliberalism

It is suggested that women in farming households are separately impacted by the adoption of genetically modified cotton in India, and not just by a trickle-down effect caused by increase in family income. Subramanian, Kirwan, Pink and Qaim (2010) have said that Bt cotton technology contributes to higher income of female laborers because harvesting of cotton is primarily female activity in India. Higher the yield gained by Bt cotton, higher is the employment for female laborers and therefore higher income for them. The additional income acquired due to Bt cotton leads to withdrawal of in-house females from farming activities and raises their quality of life. These arguments obviously side with the argument that genetically modified crops yield economic benefits for he agriculture.  

A different argument comes from a separate faction. Pionetti (2005) for example has suggested that women farmers’ practices of saving seeds contributes to self-reliance in seed, crop, nutrition, and diversity. Their paper argues for radical re-orientation in public policies to support autonomous seed production in dryland South India. This group does not readily embrace the narrative of biotech as good for agricultural yield and economy.

Another voice adding to the issue of gender in the debate over Genetically Modified crops comes from Shiva (1992). She posits monocultures as against diversity, and therefore against the farming practices of women. Because women’s farm and agriculture related practices are diverse, for them rice is not only food, but it is also fodder for cattle and straw for thatch. She argues that women’s indigenous knowledge should be the basis of crop improvement strategies.

 A similar note resonates in P. Sainath’s reportage where he points out that women in agriculture are not considered ‘farmers’. The clue here then is that it is necessary to hear what women farmers have to say about the changing ways of agriculture.

All of these views, including the first study mentioned in this blog that speaks about higher income for women in agricultural households suggest that women, their income, their knowledge all together becomes an important and a separate factor in evaluating the impact of new agricultural technology. The theoretical impulse underlying this contention is that the particular as important in relation to the universal, as Mohanty (2003) says. In “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited” she mentions that her analytical framework is the one that is attentive to the micropolitics of everyday life and macropolitics of global economic and political processes. ‘Under Western Eyes’ sought to draw attention to what was left out of feminist theorizing, the material complexity, reality, and agency of Third World women’s lives. In her rewriting of it, in the twenty first century, she suggests that using the same strategy, now theory, critique, and activism around antiglobalization has to be the key focus for feminists.
I want to end this blog by deriving some possible insights from the above-mentioned works. The literature cited above along with Mohanty’s essay on the new agenda for ‘Under Western Eyes’ suggests that gender needs to be treated as a separate category in studying poor women in marginalized settings in the new economic and global processes. Their concerns need to be addressed with new theoretical insights. And one way to do draw new theoretical insights is by being attentive to the particular, the local, the everyday. I believe it is a crucial point to note that this theoretical gap has been identified and new theorizing is considered necessary.    


References:

Subramanian, A., Kirwan, K., Pink, D., & Qaim, M. (2010). GM crops and gender issues. Nature Biotechnology, 28(5), 404-406.

Pionetti, C. (2005). Sowing autonomy: gender and seed politics in semi-arid India. International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Shiva, V. (1992). Women's indigenous knowledge and biodiversity conservation. India International Centre Quarterly, 205-214.


Mohanty, C. T. (2003). “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499-535.

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde   Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation.  These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South.  The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more