Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class

Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class
Author: Farha Bano Ternikar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2021-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793649405

This book uses everyday consumption as a lens to analyze how South Asian Muslim American women negotiate racial, religious, gendered, classed, and often political identities. In particular, Ternikar examines the use of food and clothing as well as social media accounts among this important immigrant population, offering new insight that goes beyond examining Muslim American women through the lens of hijab. This timely and nuanced interdisciplinary study draws on both sociology of consumption theory and intersectional feminism and will be valuable for courses in gender and women’s studies, sociology of consumption, and women and religion.

Rethinking New Womanhood

Rethinking New Womanhood
Author: Nazia Hussein
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-04-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319679007

Covering India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, Rethinking New Womanhood effectively introduces a ‘new’ wave of gender research from South Asia that resonates with feminist debates around the world. The volume conceptualises ‘new womanhood’ as a complex, heterogeneous and intersectional identity. By deconstructing classification systems and highlighting women’s everyday ongoing negotiations with boundaries of social categories, the book reconfigures the concept of ‘new woman’ as a symbolic identity denoting ‘modern’ femininity at the intersection of gender, class, culture, sexuality and religion in South Asia. The collection maps new sites and expressions on women and gender studies around nationhood, women’s rights, transnational feminist solidarity, ‘new girlhoods ’, aesthetic and sexualised labour, respectability and ‘modernity’, LGBT discourses, domestic violence and ‘new’ feminisms. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including gender studies, sociology, education, media and cultural studies, literature, anthropology, history, development studies, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies.

South Asian Racialization and Belonging after 9/11

South Asian Racialization and Belonging after 9/11
Author: Aparajita De
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2016-05-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498512534

This collection of essays interrogates literary and cultural narratives in the contexts of the incidents following 9/11. The collected essays underscore the new and (re)emerging racial, political, and socio-cultural discourse on identity related to terrorism and identity politics. Specifically, the collection examines South Asian American identities to understand culture, policy making, and the implicit gendered racialization, sexualization, and socio-economic classification of minority identities within the discourse of globalization. The essays included here relocate the discourse of race and cultural studies to an examination of transnational labor diasporas, reopen debate on critical constructions of U.S. racial and cultural formations, and question the reconfiguration of gendered and sexualized discourses of the South Asian diaspora within the context of national security and terrorism. This book provides a multifaceted account of South Asian racialization and belonging by drawing from disciplines across the humanities and the social sciences. The scholars included here employ methods of ethnographic studies as well as literary, culture, film, and feminist analysis to examine a wide range of South Asian cultural sites: novels, short stories, cultural texts, documentaries, and sports. The rich intellectual, theoretical, methodological, and narrative tapestry of South Asians that emerges from this inquiry enables us to trace new patterns of South Asian cultural consumption post-9/11 as well as expand notions and histories of “terror.” This volume makes an important contribution to renewing scholarship in the key areas of representations of race, labor, diaspora, class, and culture while implicating that there needs to be a simultaneous and critical dialogue on the scope and reconnections within postcolonial studies.

Arranged Marriage

Arranged Marriage
Author: Péter Berta
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2023-03-17
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1978822847

Arranged Marriage: The Politics of Tradition, Resistance, and Change shows how arranged marriage practices have been undergoing transformation as a result of global and other processes such as the revolution of digital technology, democratization of transnational mobility, or shifting significance of patriarchal power structures. The ethnographically informed chapters not only highlight how the gendered and intergenerational politics of agency, autonomy, choice, consent, and intimacy work in the contexts of partner choice and management of marriage, but also point out that arranged marriages are increasingly varied and they can be reshaped, reinvented, and reinterpreted flexibly in response to individual, family, religious, class, ethnic, and other desires, needs, and constraints. The authors convincingly demonstrate that a nuanced investigation of the reasons, complex dynamics, and consequences of arranged marriages offers a refreshing analytical lens that can significantly contribute to a deeper understanding of other phenomena such as globalization, modernization, and international migration as well as patriarchal value regimes, intergenerational power imbalances, and gendered subordination and vulnerability of women.

Navigating the Everyday as Middle-Class British-Pakistani Women

Navigating the Everyday as Middle-Class British-Pakistani Women
Author: Noreen Mirza
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030493121

This ethnographic study of middle-class British-Pakistani women in Manchester explores the sense of belonging they create through recognition and social status. Belonging in these communities is enacted through the performance of different identities—class, ethnicity, nationality, generation, age, religion, and gender—that earn them social power and status among family and friends. To prove they are “model migrants,” worthy of respect and recognition, these women perform various and intersecting identities to maximize status and social capital in diverse situations. Far from being passive victims of racial, religious, or cultural discrimination, middle-class British-Pakistani women challenge prejudice against Muslims and British-Pakistanis through certain practices, objects, performances, and relationships, serving as ambassadors for their religious and ethnic identity through their conduct and interaction with others in daily life.

Asian American Women and Men

Asian American Women and Men
Author: Yen Le Espiritu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2008
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780742560611

Labor, laws, and love. Yen Le Espiritu explores how racist and gendered labor conditions and immigration laws have affected relations between and among Asian American women and men. Asian American Men and Women documents how the historical and contemporary oppression of Asians in the United States has (re)structured the balance of power between Asian American women and men and shaped their struggles to create and maintain social institutions and systems of meaning. Espiritu emphasizes how race, gender, and class, as categories of difference, do not parallel but instead intersect and confirm one other.

American Muslim Women

American Muslim Women
Author: Jamillah Karim
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814748090

"Focusing on women, who sometimes move outside of their ethnic Muslim spaced and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups in search of gender justice, this ethnographic study of African American and South Asian immigrant Muslims in Chicago and Atlanta explores how Islamic ideas of racial harmony amd equality create hopeful possibilities in an American society that remains challenged by race and class inequalities."--Page 4 of cover.

Terrifying Muslims

Terrifying Muslims
Author: Junaid Rana
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822349116

Ethnographic research in Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States helps to explain how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced in the context of American empire and its War on Terror.

South Asian American Stories of Self

South Asian American Stories of Self
Author: Tasneem Mandviwala
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031158350

This book acknowledges and discusses the now politically infamous aspects of an American Muslim woman’s life such as Islamophobia and hijab, but it more importantly examines how women actually deal with these obstacles, intentionally shifting the lens to capture a more holistic, nuanced understanding of their human experiences. This text is based on a three-year-long qualitative interdisciplinary cultural and developmental psychology and gender systems study. It uniquely organizes risks, protective factors, and coping mechanisms according to developmental life stages, from teenage to adulthood. Results show how second-generation Muslim American women’s identities develop during adolescence (11-18), emerging adulthood (19-29), and adulthood (30-39) within multiple socio-cultural contexts. Discussions regarding Muslim Americans often erroneously equate “Muslim” with “Arab” or “Middle Eastern.” By focusing on South Asian Muslim Americans, this work bluntly discusses the overlaps of South Asian culture with Islam, an important contribution to the field since the majority of immigrant Muslims in America are of South Asian descent. This study adds nuance and detail to American Muslim girls’ and women’s experiences while fighting misinformation and stereotypes. It is a significant contribution to anthropological developmental psychology and cultural psychology. The focus on a historically academically marginalized population is beneficial to students, researchers, and professionals in the field.