This book is a feminist endeavour that seeks to retrieve what was meant to be a damning accusation—that feminists are responsible for the dissolution of the family or kutumbam kalakkal—into a source of illuminating critique. This is attempted through initiating a conversation about the convergences and divergences in the distinctly different histories of elite and non-elite Malayali families and the material and political consequences of these for women. Secondly, the book focuses on the social reproduction struggles of less-privileged women in present-day Kerala. Taken together, these strands of inquiry are essentially concerned with stripping off the quasi-natural, benign aura that continues to highlight and protect the idealised Malayali family. The book draws on interview-based research with women workers in the informal sector in the present, and on different spells of fieldwork conducted by the authors during 2006-2022, to construct a fresh conceptual vocabulary to perceive and critique the mutation of brahmanical patriarchy in late-twentieth and early twenty-first century Kerala.

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J Devika is a feminist teacher, researcher, social commentator, translator and writer of children’s fiction based at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala. Her research has been about the intertwined histories of gender, politics, development, and culture in twentieth-century Kerala. She brings to bear her training as a historian to make sense of contemporary events and developments. She writes in Malayalam and English. Among her many publications are New Lamps for Old: Gender Paradoxes of Political Decentralisation in Kerala (co-authored with Binitha V Thampi, Zubaan 2012) and Individuals, Householders, Citizens: Family Planning in Kerala (Zubaan 2008).

Anamika Ajay is currently Principal Scientist in Gender at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. Before joining the Foundation, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum. She holds a PhD in development studies from the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru. Her research interests lie at the intersections of gender, labour, ecology and the political economy of development. She is particularly interested in exploring questions of gender and caste in shaping traditional and new forms of work in contemporary rural and urban settings. Her work on gender has been published in both national and international journals. Continue Reading Family, Women, And Ill-being: A Critique of the Family in Twenty-First Century Kerala