{"title":"Liminal states: Propertied citizenship and gendered kin work in middle-class Kolkata families","authors":"Henrike Donner","doi":"10.1177/0308275X221139158","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the way the intersection between gender, class and family values is reorganised in relation to state policies that enable propertied citizenship through home-ownership. Focusing on ethnographic data from Kolkata, India, it discusses how women realise propertied citizenship in exchange for care work rather than through employment as developmentalist and liberal feminist discourses suggest. Here the way women’s lives are envisaged and represented through investment in high levels of educational attainment is in contrast to low levels of employment, symptomatic of what I call ‘liminal states’ – a gendered state of immaturity and dependence on kin. Home-ownership as a means of ‘empowerment’ configures the home as the economic and affective focus of gendered care work, which reproduces Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’, whereby the desire to own a home and the practices of homemaking hamper autonomy and restrict the efficacy of agency.","PeriodicalId":46784,"journal":{"name":"Critique of Anthropology","volume":"42 1","pages":"457 - 476"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critique of Anthropology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X221139158","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This article traces the way the intersection between gender, class and family values is reorganised in relation to state policies that enable propertied citizenship through home-ownership. Focusing on ethnographic data from Kolkata, India, it discusses how women realise propertied citizenship in exchange for care work rather than through employment as developmentalist and liberal feminist discourses suggest. Here the way women’s lives are envisaged and represented through investment in high levels of educational attainment is in contrast to low levels of employment, symptomatic of what I call ‘liminal states’ – a gendered state of immaturity and dependence on kin. Home-ownership as a means of ‘empowerment’ configures the home as the economic and affective focus of gendered care work, which reproduces Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’, whereby the desire to own a home and the practices of homemaking hamper autonomy and restrict the efficacy of agency.
期刊介绍：
Critique of Anthropology is dedicated to the development of anthropology as a discipline that subjects social reality to critical analysis. It publishes academic articles and other materials which contribute to an understanding of the determinants of the human condition, structures of social power, and the construction of ideologies in both contemporary and past human societies from a cross-cultural and socially critical standpoint. Non-sectarian, and embracing a diversity of theoretical and political viewpoints, COA is also committed to the principle that anthropologists cannot and should not seek to avoid taking positions on political and social questions.
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