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List of contents
1. Introduction: Innovation: transforming hierarchies in South Asia 2. Katibs and computers: innovation and ideology in the Urdu newspaper revival 3. Microcredit and building social capital in rural Bangladesh – drawing the uneasy link 4. Mobile telephony, mediation, and gender in rural India 5. Supply and demand demographics: dowry, daughter aversion and marriage markets in contemporary north India 6. Domestic violence made public: a case study of the use of alternative dispute resolution among underprivileged women in Bangladesh
About the author
Minna Säävälä is an adjunct professor of social anthropology in the University of Helsinki, Finland and works as a senior researcher in the Population Research Institute, Finland. Her current research projects relate to family formation in India and reproductive health of migrant populations in Europe.
Sirpa Tenhunen is an anthropologist who teaches in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland as a professor (interim) and university lecturer. She has also taught anthropology in the University of Helsinki, Finland and worked as a researcher in the Academy of Finland. In addition to new media, her research interests cover gender, work and politics in India.
Summary
This book examines innovation as social change in South Asia. From an anthropological micro-perspective, innovation is moulded by social systems of value and hierarchy, while simultaneously having the potential to transform them. Peterson examines the printing press’s changing technology and its intersections with communal and language ideologies in India. Tenhunen explores mobile telephony, gender, and kinship in West Bengal. Uddin looks at microcredit and its relationship with social capital in Bangladesh. Jeffrey surveys imbalanced sex ratios and the future of marriage payments in north-western India. Ashrafun and Säävälä investigate alternative dispute resolution as a social innovation which affects the life options of battered young wives in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
These case studies give insights into how the deeply engrained cultural models and values affect the forms that an innovative process can take. In the case of some South Asian societies, starkly hierarchical and holistic structures mean that innovations can have unpredictable sociocultural repercussions. The book argues that successful innovation requires taking into account how social hierarchies may steer their impact.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary South Asia.
