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Reconfiguring home, world and cosmos: health initiatives in women’s self-help groups in Kanyakumari, India

Subramanian, Shobana
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150483913

Abstract Details

2006, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
Based on ethnographic research, this study focuses on health education programs organized by a women’s self-help network in Kanyakumari, India, the Mahalir Association of Literary, Awareness and Rights (MALAR), and the familial practices of individuals who make up the network.The MALAR health initiatives are part of a larger vision for women’s empowerment, consisting of economic programs that include a loans and savings scheme and development of small businesses by women (or microcredit enterprise), the building of national and international alliances to expand their efforts, based on the principles of “health-as-a-right,” which call for revising national priorities in development, as well as local campaigns that incorporate a wide variety of educational resources, including community knowledge on herbal medicine. This study argues the health practices reorient community health care and social identity, in the context of the home and in larger social domains (the world). Through the practices of belief, individual practices also revisit healing and its relationship to empowerment in the context of spiritual domains (the cosmos).The study argues the reorientation occurs simultaneously in global-level relationships and values and local relationships and values, under the overarching concept of “self-help.” Local global dynamics help to produce the claims about what accounts for health and determine how health is negotiated in cultural practices, and involve strategic and value-laden enactments, and sites of tension such as in belief practices.The study posits “self-help” denotes the strategies of “lay” people, a line of enquiry which stresses alternative domains of expertise and systemization in health that question official narratives, but also lays bare the ideological underpinnings of all health systems, their interconnectedness and differences. The health practices are analyzed using an agent-centered model of performance, which involves the study of cultural practices as they emerge in context, with the stress on the frameworks articulated by the people themselves. The performances establish the agency of women as patients, practitioners and activists negotiating multiple and mutli-layered health care systems, but also underscores the limitations of the resources available to women.
Amy Shuman (Advisor)
346 p.
Folklore

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Subramanian, S. (2006). Reconfiguring home, world and cosmos: health initiatives in women’s self-help groups in Kanyakumari, India [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150483913

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Subramanian, Shobana. Reconfiguring home, world and cosmos: health initiatives in women’s self-help groups in Kanyakumari, India. 2006. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150483913.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Subramanian, Shobana. "Reconfiguring home, world and cosmos: health initiatives in women’s self-help groups in Kanyakumari, India." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150483913

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.