First published in 1999.Jyoti Puri draws on post-colonial and feminist theory to focus on how women in current-day India conceptualize their gender and sexuality. She provides a groundbreaking ethnographic study based on fifty-four middle- and upper-class Indian women, ranging from the ages of fifteen to thirty-eight. She argues that these women's narratives are shaped by not only the nation-state, but by transnational processes as well.

Woman, Bodyand Desire in Postcolonial India connects important issues of class an nationhood to the emerging sense of female identity in India, covering previously neglected topics such as menstruation, gay and straight sexual experience, sexual harassment and assault, marriage and motherhood. Puri discovers that attitudes about sexuality and gender are surprisingly similar in India and Western countries.

About the Author
Jyoti Puri is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Simmons College, Boston.

Reviews

"[A] fascinating exploration and analysis of the limits and possibilities of national and sexual identities in postcolonial India and a timely challenge to received ideas about tradition and western in the scholarship on sexualities in India." -- Contemporary Sociology
"A groundbreaking study of class, gender, nationhood, & identity in India...Unique in its linkage of postcolonial & sexuality studies..." -- Sociological Abstracts
"An engaging and valuable book. Puri's insightful and provocative exploration of the limits and possibilities of national and sexual identity in post-colonial India is a model for transnational feminist analysis...[T]his study provides a groundbreaking cartography of the regulation of heteronormative, urban middleclass womanhood." -- Chandra Mohanty
"Jyoti Puri's Women, Body and Desire in Post-ColonialIndia succesfully integrates interview data with a sophisticated and compelling theoretical analysis that engages directly with the topic of feminism and national identities." -- Atlantic

Book Information
ISBN 9780415921282
Author Jyoti Puri
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 460g