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Thakkilapati Dissertation Final.pdf (11.95 MB)

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Country Girls: Gender, Caste, and Mobility in Rural India

Thakkilapati, Sri Devi
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6246-0462
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462288395

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Sociology.
Since the late 1990s, India has asserted its modernity through a “new middle class” that promises inclusion to all worthy citizens. Yet India’s claims to modernity are consistently challenged by trenchant gender, caste, and class inequalities. The figure of the poor, uneducated rural woman marks the limits of Indian modernity. As such, rural young women and their families have become key targets of development programs. This dissertation looks at how families and young women in rural India are responding to new pressures to achieve social mobility and represent the nation. Using ethnographic data from ten months of fieldwork in the Guntur region of south India, I argue that gender, class, and caste are reproduced in distinctive ways, despite the vastness of change associated with modernization in India. I distinguish the current re-articulation of gender, class, and caste inequalities from the formations of the past on the basis of three characteristics: First, though women are becoming more educated, I find that education alone is insufficient to address social inequalities and may even increase disparities. Second, I demonstrate how the transnational migration of elites has transformed social life in Guntur. Lastly, I find that educational privatization has produced a highly stratified educational system that almost perfectly reproduces the class system. My analysis clarifies whether and how rural young women, who are often perceived as the most disadvantaged fraction of Indian society, are able to achieve social mobility.
Steven Lopez (Committee Chair)
Mytheli Sreenivas (Committee Member)
Korie Edwards (Committee Member)
249 p.
Gender Studies; Sociology; South Asian Studies
India, Gender, Caste, Class, Globalization, Transnationalism, Hegemony, Education, Bourdieu, Civil society, Andhra Pradesh, Rural India

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Thakkilapati, S. D. (2016). Country Girls: Gender, Caste, and Mobility in Rural India [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462288395

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Thakkilapati, Sri. Country Girls: Gender, Caste, and Mobility in Rural India. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462288395.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Thakkilapati, Sri. "Country Girls: Gender, Caste, and Mobility in Rural India." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462288395

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1462288395
2,266
© 2016, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Country Girls: Gender, Caste, and Mobility in Rural India by Sri Devi Thakkilapati is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.