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" Death before birth : "
Perwez, Shahid
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1098314
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| Doc. No
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TLets538436
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| Main Entry
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Perwez, Shahid
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| Title & Author
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Death before birth :\ Perwez, Shahid
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| College
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University of Edinburgh
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| Date
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2009
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| student score
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2009
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis deals with the cultural and political underpinnings of female infanticideand sex selective abortion in contemporary South India. Based on a fifteen months'ethnographic fieldwork in western parts of Salem district in Tamil Nadu, I explorethe ideas and practices around deaths of (un)born children - particularly in thecontext of issues of gender-selective child survival, use and control over newreproductive technologies for sex selection, fertility and reproduction. Elucidatingfurther the ethnographic contexts of state and non-state (primarily NGO)interventions in these deaths, the thesis examines the new forms of governance onissues that affect contemporary Tamil women. I discuss three different discourses bythe government, by NGOs, and by the communities on the meaning and context ofthese deaths including the ways in which these meanings and ideas are reconceptualisedand re-configured into a changing social and cultural context of birth.My thesis, therefore, contributes to the anthropology of reproduction.The underlying questions of the thesis are: Why has female infanticide, which wasclaimed to be effectively controlled in nineteenth century colonial India, appeared inpost-colonial (South) India - in the form of both sex selective abortion and femaleinfanticide - in communities and regions where it was previously claimed to beunknown? What effects could these social practices have on contemporary women' spositions and their developments and vice-versa? In answering these questions. thethesis makes a significant departure from previous anthropological studies on femaleinfanticide in India in that it does not solely look into one single unit (village/s in thiscase), but uses a multi-sited approach, covering a wider geographical area, i.e partsof Salem, Dharmapuri, and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. The thesis also shifts fromthe purely demographic approach to female infanticide in that it does not generate anew data set on felmale infanticide. Rather, it engages with the institutional responsesand their rhetoric on female infanticide and sex selective abortion.
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| Added Entry
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University of Edinburgh
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