Educating Activists

Development and Gender in the Making of Modern Gandhians

By (author) Rebecca Klenk

Hardback - £97.00

Publication date:

26 October 2010

Length of book:

264 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739137352

What do people make of their own development? In Educating Activists, Rebecca M. Klenk illuminates a reality that is far more complex than either development planners or critics commonly assume. This gracefully written, accessible ethnography shows how rural women accept, refuse, reinterpret, and negotiate development's terms in a quest to improve their own communities. Klenk offers an account of Lakshmi Ashram, a remarkable Gandhian educational initiative for women and girls in Himalayan India. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Educating Activists blends memories and stories with historical research and richly detailed ethnographic analysis to craft a compelling portrait of how women across two generations have engaged with issues of sustainability, poverty, gender equity, autonomy, and progress.
Engaging, nuanced, and beautifully written, Educating Activists is an exemplary study that demonstrates the power of ethnographic writing and method. Tracing the gendered experience of development in a Gandhian Ashram in Kumaon Himalayas, India over two generations, Educating Activists offers a critical and sophisticated reading of the cultural politics of development, its gendered articulations, and multiple and unintended consequences. Written with verve and clarity, it is a must-read for undergraduate and advanced students interested in critical development studies, feminist anthropology, and South Asian studies.