WS 8 Collective blog

  The work culture in contemporary times is changing significantly. Women are also taking part in ‘ paid works ’ . This paid work culture popularly considered as having a emancipatory potential of women ’ s predicaments. This short note is an attempt to look at it with a question “ Is it so or a new form of oppression is emerging with adaptive potential of patriarchy with the time and space? ” While educated women may have expanded their share of managerial jobs, they still face a glass ceiling in the higher strata of management. Poorer women continue to be disproportionately represented in casual and poorly paid activities at the informal end of the labor market. T he view that ‘women’s empowerment, or emancipation as it used to be called, lies in their incorporation into the ‘ paid workforce ’ needed a critical interrogation. There is a question troubling me often, ‘Does the access to cond...

  Regarding the seminal work around Cultural Industry, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, addressed the growing uniformity in art and cultural forms as the result of what they called the mechanizations of the ‘culture industry’ in contemporary Western societies, that is, the penetration of industrial mass-production methods into the realms of culture and art. The basic core of Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the cultural industries lies in the art and culture ’s systematic fabrication of modes of behavior whereby the profit-seeking, technology-driven Western capitalist ethic extends beyond material mass consumption to include cultural items and even people’s perceptions of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘smart’. Bollywood cinema has become crucial to the Indian way of living is the way it has come to permeate the daily life and culture of the Indian society. The growing abundance of cinematic images ac...

Growing up in an urban city like Bangalore was very different from how my kids experience it. The concept of apartments and gated communities was unheard or seen. My memory of the same can be visualized by a lot of us kids from diverse backgrounds playing on the streets. Sometimes together ,sometimes in groups that now appears segregated based on socio cultural background.  The illusion that it gave some of us was that we coexisted wonderfully despite our diverse backgrounds. Sometimes I felt this could be true especially when we celebrated all festivals, even if not together but, often , in the sharing of the festive food. I still remember gobbling up the hot biriyani from Ahmed uncle's home on Eid, licking my fingers that were covered in christmas cake cream from Rini Aunty's home and carrying trays of home made sweet to all in the neighbourhood during diwali.  Velliamma who worked at our home as a domestic worker, lived within a few streets from us. We often met her and her...

Through the making of these quilts one can witness the transfer of culture from one generation to the other. The practice of up-cycling sarees, rather aajichi saree into a Godhadi comes to be deemed as a sustainable way of living as well. This practice of making quilts has been revived and has come into light here as a niche aesthetic that is now being appreciated by the upper class. In actuality, the art and practice of quilt making has always been prevalent in middle class households. Women in middle class households always engaged themselves in the art of quilt making so as to preserve material resources and to make innovative use of whatever available resources, in this case old sarees. There are various benefits of using the Godhadi as well, for people with respiratory disease it helps ward off dust and makes the blanket more breathable For the longest time, Godhadi were a marker of low class in Maharashtra. Individuals from the Wadar community learnt the art of quilt making as th...

Owing to the significant social meaning held by textiles, clothing is rarely discarded  in India. Instead, it is frequently recycled for both the domestic and global markets. For a long time, the act of recycling and repurposing old clothes has been a means for Indians to preserve their history while also being thrifty. Furthermore, many Indian states have made a thriving business out of repurposing old clothes using craft techniques unique to their culture. Traditionally fabric from old sarees are stitched together using run stitches to give it a unique look, the finished product ends up being a blanket or a wrap. The art of quilting is prevalent and is found across different communities in India. Using sarees to make a blanket is called Kantha and is famous in the eastern states of India like Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. Godhadi is a traditional, hand-stitched, Maharashtrian quilt offering a range of bedding solutions and can also often be made into other accessories like hand b...

  Depiction of Homosexuality in Indian Mythological Literature Shivangi Saxena  Indian mythological wealth is often credited to reveal a lot about different concepts of human life that are beyond the normal human consciousness. Literature from Vedic and Post-Vedic periods like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Upanishads have certain specific stories that connected the mythology to the living styles of humans. They have also provided various aspects of human life and one such aspect is Homosexuality or Third Gender.  Though, the term Homosexuality symbolizes the nature of a person of being sexually attracted solely to people of same-sex, the third Gender is identified as a different category. But the Indian mythological texts have attributed both in a single category called ‘Tritiya-Prakriti’. Three texts that stand out among them are the ‘Narada-Smriti’, the ‘Sushruta Samhita’ and the ‘Kama Sutra’. All these texts are attributed to different sages. For instance, the ...

    Indian Sanitary Napkin ads: No change to some change Shivangi Saxena     Menstrual health has taken a backseat in the list of our institutional priorities for the longest time in India. As many as 23 million girls drop out of school every year. The main cause behind it can be attributed to lack of awareness and information among the Indian households and schools.  Television advertisements are one of the strongest tools of educating the Indian audience. We have several sanitary napkin brands which pay huge sums of money to air their brands. However, we need to critically engage and try to understand what exactly is being shown in these ads? And has there been any transition in the content of the ads over the period of time?  For years, period ads have focused on the fact that people should be discreet about their flow like it's something to be ashamed of. National Association of broadcasters allowed sanitary napkins to be advertised on t...

 An Indian fashion student wore the traditional Indian attire on the streets of Milan in 2021. A headline worthy story here was of a male student wearing a sari and bindi to represent his culture. ‘Breaking gender norms’ as many famous news platforms called this story. In the recent times when many celebrities and ‘influencers’ are have taken up the mantle to challenge gendered clothing, saris too have become a site to contest ideas of masculinity and femineity. The ‘traditional Indian women’s attire’ seems to be joining the androgenous fashion trends. While the questions like who drapes it? Or how it is draped? do challenge the ideas of gender and ‘Indian’ culture, it leaves out one important area where gender norms can be questioned – men behind sari making. The process behind the production and sale of saris is a tedious one which includes mostly men at the decision-making stages. The process of sari making involves several steps from spinning, weaving, dyeing, and more that inv...

Perfume as a commercial product is heavily categorized by gender – flowery, fruity scents for women; woody leathery scents for men. Perfumes are gender assigned because marketing products through gender binary is an effecting strategy of perfume brands for making profits. Marketing leverages the stereotypes of perfect man/woman. Sex and attraction have traditionally played an integral role in perfume world.   These strategies work because perfume is both a functional product as well as an aspirational lifestyle product. In recent years beauty and fashion industry has been influenced by gender neutrality. Unisex perfumes have been in market for some time now (since the launch of CK One in the 1990s). The popularity of unisex perfumes is gradually increasing. This is due to the greater awareness of public with regard to gender identity issues and to changes in the stereotypical perception of masculine and feminine attributes such as smell. Perfume companies advertise and market uni...

The etymological skill of a speaker is their insight/capacity to create or perceive meaning. Nonetheless, the phonetic capability isn't sufficient to seem OK. One requires the information on the social shows of a specific culture to make meaning. Since language is exceptionally reliant upon the way of life around it, it is in many faculties a performative goes about too. The sexual orientations are hence impacted by the language they talk. I might want to examine the interrelation between orientation and language and what the two reciprocally mean to one another. It is never a dull chance to survey and repeat the requirement for a feminist change, however, there is even more motivation to do it when the greater part of the populace has hit a respite, and we have adequate time to burn to think about how our general public has been molded, as though of course, in male-driven ways. Regardless of some advancement, the arising worldwide agreement is that genuine change has been tortuous...