Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

<> To make the savings just add up to enough so that they could meet the expenses of the summer months when Subeer did not have his assistantship meant that Ratna would work as much as she physically could. <> Waking up early in the morning, she would catch the 6:45 a.m. bus on St. George to get to the house of the Tarafdar's on the other side of town. From the bus stop, a fifteen minutes walk would take her to the home of the Tarafdar's exactly by 7:50 so that she just had enough time to get in so that Mrs. Ruma Tarafdar could hand over her three month old son, Shubhro, and explain all the tasks of the day to Ratna before heading out of the door. She would watch Shubhro, feed him, play with him, read stories to him until Mr. Tarafdar came home at 3:45 p.m. for her to then rush out to catch the 4:00 p.m. bus to the house of Mr. Srinivas. <> It would not be until 6 p.m. that she would reach the Srinivas home to watch Ankit, their four year old son...

1) Based on the reading, how have current feminist studies ignored or even perpetuated misconceptions about women's relationship with neoliberalism? What sort of studies would you propose to highlight this relationship (i.e. correct what is missing in feminist studies)? 2) Other than embracing neoliberalist concepts of private property, how else might you resolve the tension between "women's work" and "men's work"? Along with this, how might you value "women's work" economically? In society? In government policies and structure?

1.)   How is the connection between consumption and overpopulation conceptualized in this chapter? What do they have to do with gender? And more specifically, what are the relations between overconsumption in the West and the problematizing of population growth in the Global South? 2.)   Given the discussion of the patriarchal biases and logics of neoliberalism that enact gendered forms of violence and marginalization, how can we begin to link this to similar logics and processes within the academy?

1) Given that neoliberalism dominates U.S. policy on issues such as IP and Piracy, can the push for "freedom" against the IP Act by Wikipedia and other sites be seen as minority cultural discourses? Or a cry for change of the dominant view? 2) Harvey's book on neoliberalism seems to present the idea of this discourse as being orchestrated by intention and purposeful minds.  Do you agree or disagree and why? Should Neoliberalism be viewed this way? What other kinds of "free" state might Iraq/Iran accomplish without the influence of the U.S.?

I have been posting on my FB site about the recent story of the US pressing charges on Mr. Rajat Gupta for his involvement in insider trading. This story comes across as the striking story of neoliberal greed that has inundated India, particularly so because Mr. Gupta has been the poster child of success in the Indian landscape, depicting the markers of success along the lines that middle class parents desire for their children to model into. These markers of success are carried out in India by the trajectory of the IITs and IIMs, ultimately ending up with the ultimate job of an investment banker on Wall Street. The value of the investment banker for his parents lies in the markers of materialism he has achieved. This story furthermore gets gendered as we move ahead to complete the story: the parents of Indian girls in the marriage market desiring for their daughters to marry a hot-shot investment banker with all the material resources. This is of course then framed within the framewor...

The narrative of "Shining India" is a fairly straightforward narrative. It is a story of growth and development, a story of high rises, start ups, call centers, IT hubs, and tremendous development accomplished through trade liberalization. Development is storied in the form of infrastructures, roads, hopitals for NRIs, and the multiplexes that are continually being targeted at the NRIs living abroad (look for instance at the most recent narratives of development being articulated in the context of Gujarat). India has progressed so much that going back to India is no longer a dream, but rather a reality, where you can combine the lifestyle of neoliberal capitalism with the spices of the local culture, filled with the colors, tastes, and thrills of the spaces NRIs nostalgically think of as home. For the NRI, it is once again an opportunity to re-invent one's home that is now devoid of the problems of poor infrastructure that once plagued India. It is precisely however i...