Recasting Culture to Undo Gender : A Sociological Analysis of Jeevika in Rural Bihar, India

Sanyal, Paromita ; Rao, Vijayendra ; Majumdar, Shruti

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: SANITATION;    EMPOWERMENT;    WOMEN LEADERS;    BENEFIT;    SOCIAL NORMS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7411
RP-ID  :  WPS7411

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper brings together sociologicaltheories of culture and gender to answer the question – howdo large-scale development interventions induce culturalchange? Through three years of ethnographic work in ruralBihar, the authors examine this question in the context ofJeevika, a World Bank-assisted poverty alleviation projecttargeted at women, and find support for an integrative viewof culture. The paper argues that Jeevika created new“cultural configurations” by giving economically andsocially disadvantaged women access to a well-definednetwork of people and new systems of knowledge, whichchanged women’s habitus and broke down normativerestrictions constitutive of the symbolic boundary of gender.