Moral boundaries of class and gender in urban India
What does it mean to be middle-class in urban India? Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Hyderabad, this project outlines the diversity within this broad class category and the factors that inhibit social mobility from barely to securely middle-class.
Funded by a Rhodes Scholarship and a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Melbourne
-
Within the limits
Published by Oxford University Press (2017), my monograph highlights the centrality of morality to middle-class identities in Hyderabad, and the challenges young women face in balancing classed and gendered moralities.
-
A fine balance
Published in Modern Asian Studies (2014), this article explores the competing pressures of feminine respectability and cosmopolitan cool experienced by young women in Hyderabad as they negotiate use of public space, fashion and dating.
-
From respect to friendship
Published in South Asia (2014), this article explores changing perceptions of marriage in middle-class Hyderabad, characterised by an increased emphasis on an egalitarian ethos of friendship but continued expectations of feminine ‘adjustment’.