In the last couple of decades, violence as an analytic category has loomed large in the historical, literary, and anthropological scholarship of South Asia.

The challenge of thinking violence in its gendered incarnations fully and in all its complexity is not only theoretical or critical but also irreducibly ethical and political, given the proliferation of civil wars, pogroms and riots, fundamentalist movements, insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and new technologies of violence and injury. All of these simultaneously feature and help constitute gendered actors and gendered scripts of violence.

States of Trauma seeks to examine this terrain by staging a set of questions. How are we to think about the moral charge that accrues to violence? What is the relationship between violence and non-violence? In considering the moral and affective economy of violence, how may we speak of the seductions of the idioms and practices of militarism and sexualized violence for women? How are these seductions/pleasures distinct from those proffered to men, if indeed they are distinct?

The midnight knock on the door and the disappearance of a loved one into the hands of authorities is a 20th-century horror story familiar to many destined to “live in interesting times.” Yet, some stories remain untold. Such is the account of the internment
of ethnic Chinese who had settled for many years in northern India. When the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962 broke out, over 2,000 Chinese-Indians were rounded up, placed in local jails, then transported over a thousand miles away to the Deoli internment camp in the Rajasthan Desert.

Born in Calcutta, India, in 1949, and raised in Darjeeling, Yin Marsh was just thirteen years old when first her father was arrested, and then she, her grandmother and her eight-year-old brother were all taken to the Darjeeling Jail, then sent to Deoli. Ironically, Nehru – India’s first Prime Minister and the one who had authorized the mass arrests – had once “done time” in Deoli during India’s war for independence. Yin and her family were assigned to the same bungalow where Nehru had also been unjustly held.

Eventually released, Yin emigrated to America with her mother, attended college, married and raised her own family, even as the emotional trauma remained buried. When her own college-age daughter began to ask questions and when a friend’s wedding would require a return to her homeland, Yin was finally ready to face what had happened to her family.

PLEASE NOTE: This copy is discounted at 70% and is in saleable but not pristine condition. It may show signs of age or wear.

This delightful, and insightful, tale is told by one of Bhutan's leading writers, Kunzang Choden. "Neypo shong gna? Is there room for me?" a wandering monk asks the little old lady who lives on the hill. The question is repeated again and again as more and more visitors remove by. The kind lady welcomes them in, one by one. And the story ends with the teaching: “There will always be room in your home, as long as there is room in your heart.”

Along with Aunty Mouse, this charming picture book makes perfect bedtime reading for youngsters, and is beautifully illustrated with evocative watercolours of the Bhutanese landscapes and people by Pema Tshering.

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A heartwarming tale about the importance of kindness.

In Suki, fabulist Suniti Namjoshi weaves a delightful tapestry from threads of longing, loss, memory, metaphor, and contemplation. The whole picture is a stunning evocation of the love and friendship shared between S and her Super Cat, Suki, a lilac Burmese. Suki suggests that she could be a goddess, and S her high priestess. S declines, but as they discuss the merits of vegetarianism, or the meaning of happiness, or morality, or just daily life, it soon becomes clear that the bond between them is a deep and complex one. The days of Suki's life are figured as leaves, which fall vividly but irrevocably into time's stream and are recollected with a wild tenderness by the grieving S, who learns through the disciplines of meditation how to lose what is most loved.

This beautiful narrative, both memoir and elegy, offers solace and celebration to everyone who has felt the trust that passes between a person and a beloved creature.

The fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and of dictatorships in Latin America brought new attention to democratic movements worldwide. Most interest focused on national activities, electoral politics and the expansion of capitalist markets, and though much has been written about social movements, the connections between women's grassroots organisations and democratization has been neglected. This book explores how these movements contribute to the expansion of pubic and private spaces and democratic processes. The sixteen case studies highlight women's grassroots movements in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Eritrea, South Africa, Syria, Egypt, El Salvador, Honduras, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Ireland, Canada, the United States (Appalachia) and Australia. They reveal the connections between local political and social action and the growth of democratic processes at state, regional and global levels. The book illustrates how community-based actions, programmes and organizations that empower women contribute to the creation of a civil society and thus enhance democracy.

Jill M Bystdzienki is Director of Women's Studies and Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University. She is author of Women in Electoral Politics: Lessons from Norway and editor of Women Transforming Politics: Worldwide Strategies for Empowerment.

Joti Sekhon is Professor of Sociology at Greensboro College, where she is also the coordinator of the International Studies Programme. She is the author of Modern India.

Drawing from feminist, post modern, cultural, sociological and medical anthropological literature, this work shows the complex intertwining of illness and culture in the context of mental disorder.
The ethnographic context of the study is the interface between mental health professionals, patients and their families in a local psychiatric hospital in New Delhi. The book anchors the discussion around feminist thinking and praxis in the mental health realm, along with the traditions of cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology.
Deconstructing Mental Illness is relevant and contemporary, and makes an important contribution to the field of mental health of women. This important new work extends the frontiers of social science research and offers alternative perspectives on women, health and disability. 

Celebratory new features about India's thriving middle class tell only part of the story of the country's recent economic rise, frequently glossing over the 300 million Indians who live on the margins and struggle to survive under economic liberalization. How do those, cast out of their country's successes, perceive and respond to their position and mobilize against disempowerment?

Aradhana Sharma takes up these questions, focusing on the work of an innovative women's programme called Mahila Samakhya, that is part governmental and part non-governmental and strives to empower those rural Indian woman who have been pushed aside. Detailing the awkward ideological articulations and paradoxical outcomes of this unique activist-cum-government organization, Paradoxes of Empowerment fosters a deeper understanding of development and politics in contemporary India.

In this important study, Shirin Rai provides a comprehensive assessment of how gender politics has emerged and developed in post-colonial states.

In chapters on key issues of nationalism and nation-building, the third wave of democratization, and globalization and governance, Rai argues that the gendered way in which nationalist state-building occurred created deep fissures and pressures for development. She goes on to show how women have engaged with institutions of governance in developing countries, looking at political participation, democracy, representation, leadership and state feminism. Through this engagement, Rai claims, vital new political spaces have been created. Though Rai focuses on India, the book’s argument is highly relevant for politics across the developing world.

This is a unique and compelling synthesis of gender politics with ideas about development from an authoritative figure in the field.

“In this proof of her powerful scholarship, Shirin Rai combines discussions of key concepts in feminist and development studies, with studies of actual gender politics of development, from grass roots to global institutions.” -- Drude Dahlerup, Stockholm University 

“Lucidly written, Shirin Rai’s essays are insightful contributions to recent feminist debates on democratization and globalization.” -- Bina Agarwal, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University 

Although there have been notable gains for women globally in the last few decades, gender inequality and gender-based inequities continue to impinge upon girls’ and women’s ability to realize their rights and their full potential as citizens and equal partners in decision-making and development. In fact, for every right that has been established, there are millions of women who do not enjoy it.

In this book, studies from Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are prefaced by an introductory chapter that links current thinking on gender justice to debates on citizenship, entitlements, and law and development. A concluding chapter situates the discussion of gender justice, citizenship, and entitlements in current development debates on poverty alleviation and social exclusion. The book brings together multidisciplinary perspectives from leading feminist scholars of sociology, political science and legal studies, among others, and in doing so, provides new insights for both advocacy and research.

MAITRAYEE MUKHOPADHYAY is the Area Leader for Social Development and Gender Equity in the Department of Development Policy and Practice at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam.

NAVSHARAN SINGH is Senior Program Officer in the Women’s Rights and Citizenship Program of IDRC, and is based at IDRC’s office in New Delhi.

The Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia research project (coordinated by Zubaan and supported by the International Development Research Centre) brings together, for the first time in the region, a vast body of knowledge on this important – yet silenced – subject. Six country volumes (one each on Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and two on India) comprising over fifty research papers and two book-length studies detail the histories of sexual violence and look at the systemic, institutional, societal, individual and community structures that work together to perpetuate impunity for perpetrators.

This volume focuses on Bangladesh, a nation born in 1971, in a birth that was as marked by bloodshed as it was by sexual violence. The history of widespread sexual violence, and incidents of sexual slavery, as well as the absence of accountability for the perpetrators, is by now well known. The essays here address the structural dynamics of impunity at the individual and societal levels, looking not only at the conditions that go into its creation, but also the elements that fuel it. They ask what helps it to become so embedded and point to its human, global and national costs. Together they explore the ways in which the women’s movement and feminist practice have worked to demand accountability and recognition for the victims and survivors of sexual violence, challenging the impunities embedded in the patriarchal structures of Bangladeshi society. In doing so, they bear witness to the continuing efforts of women’s groups in Bangladesh to give this crucial issue the attention that it deserves, for without that, justice for victims and survivors, will remain elusive.

"Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Viet Nam and the Amazon forests of South America, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it.
A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods.
The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalization, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations among them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalization. "

Dzodzi Tsikata is a senior Research Fellow at Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research(ISSER) and Deputy Head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) at the University of Ghana. Her research interests are the areas of gender and livelihoods, gender and development policy and practice, land and resources tenure reforms. She has several publications on these subjects including a book, Living in the Shadow of the Large Dams: Long Term Responses of Lakeside and Downstream Communities of Ghana's Volta River Project(2006).
Pamela Gholah worked as Program Officer with the Women's Rights and Citizenship Program at the International Development Research Centre, Canada. In 2009, she joined the Research and Evaluation Branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada as a Policy and Research Analyst.

On September 1, 1995, Tibetan nationalism and international feminism cam together in front of a global audience when nine exiled Tibetan women staged a demonstration at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. From a Tibetan perspective, the women created history by becoming the first Tibetans ever to hold a protest on Chinese soil. This book traces the history of organized political resistance by Tibetan women over the 40-year period leading up of the Beijing Conference. It describes and analyses the development of the Tibetan Women's Association, the mass women's organization of the Tibetan Exile Community and in particular the impact of feminism on it. It looks at at the overlaps and tensions between nationalism and feminism, and examines how both can be constructed in exile. In doing so, the book raises questions of belonging and representation, of change and permanence, of political expediency and idealism. Overall, it provides a unique insight into the nature of Tibetan Nationalism and its interaction with international forces and movements.

Across the South Asian region, water determines livelihoods and in some cases even survival. However, water also creates exclusions. Access to water, and its social organisation, are intimately tied up with power relations. This book provides an overview of gender, equity and water issues relevant to South Asia. The essays empirically illustrate and theoretically argue how gender intersects with other axes of social difference such as class, caste, ethnicity, age and religion to shape water access, use and management practices. Divided into six thematic sections, each of which starts with an introduction of relevant concepts, debates and theories, the book looks at laws and rights, policies, technologies and intervention strategies. In all, the book clearly shows how understanding and changing the use, distribution and management of water is conditional upon understanding and accommodating gender relations.