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A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Professional Doctorate Thesis. ; This doctoral thesis is a reflexive inquiry into my education practice with social care students as I encourage them to engage in relational self-reflexivity in preparation for practice. Having taught social care students in higher education for many years, I noticed some found it difficult to be reflexive compared with their ability to understand a theory or develop their skills. I felt this was not an individual deficit but a systemic one and was related to their experience within education systems. These systems constructed over decades, resulted in them having few opportunities to be relationally reflexive of themselves and their lives to work in social care contexts. In this study, I set out to address this gap, by providing a different learning context where relational reflexivity in preparation for practice is emphasised. The approach described here is a development on the individualised, de-contextualised form of reflection common in most social care training. Instead, I developed a model of reflexivity for education which focuses on social care as a relational and systemic endeavour with the social care worker and client engaged in an ongoing relationship with each other. Providing this type of learning space for students meant my teaching practice also had to change. I could no longer be a bystander asking students to be reflexive of themselves, without also being reflexive of my practice. I adopted a collaborative, fluid, dialogical and non-expert position with students in small reflexive learning groups which not only encouraged greater reflexivity for them but a richer reflexivity of my practice as an educator. In this research, I develop a critically reflexive account of professional practice from our experiences within the group process and situate it within a discussion of related literature and practice. This research draws on postmodern qualitative theory which supports first-person inquiry into professional practice. I study our engagement in reflexivity within the group sessions, through the students' and my reflexive diaries, feedback from students and by the video reviews of the teaching sessions. By assembling all these rich layers of research material, I offer here a model of relational reflexivity for education and training contexts which I have named SPiRRaLS (Systemic Practices in Relational Reflexivity and Learning Systems) as it focuses on relationships, the wider social, political, cultural and professional contexts and how these influence professional practice with clients and students. The research indicates that there are many benefits for students from engaging in this form of reflexivity that can, therefore, enhance their relationships with service users. From my experience of this process, I believe other disciplines would also benefit from this model of relational reflexivity in their education or training contexts. The study highlights the importance of support from organisations and education systems to help curate such relationally reflexive spaces. It requires institutional changes and resource allocation to develop practices that are more in line with contemporary society where education is not merely about knowledge acquisition but is liberatory, participative and potentially life-changing for the student, educator, and client.

Important recent works on the Mughal state and women in the Indo-Muslim world have not considered courtesans or tawa'ifs, the singing and dancing women employed by Indo-Muslim states and nobles, to be significant participants in politics and society. Drawing on detailed archival data from late nineteenth century Hyderabad state and other historical materials, I argue that courtesans were often elite women, cultural standard-setters and wielders of political power. Women whose art and learning gained them properties and alliances with powerful men, they were political players in precolonial India and in the princely states. They successfully negotiated administrative reforms in princely states like Hyderabad, continuing to secure protection and patronage while in British India they began to be classified as prostitutes. Colonial and modern India have been less than kind to courtesans and their artistic traditions, and more research needs to be done on the history of courtesans and their communities.

Much has been written about Goswamis or Gosains as ascetics, but little has been written about their evolution into a caste, an endogamous marriage network with women and children. Coming from northern India to Hyderabad as sanyasis, male ascetics tracing lines of spiritual succession from guru to chela, Goswamis lived in maths, ostensibly without women or biological heirs. Goswami lineages established themselves as banking houses in Begum Bazar and leading Goswamis were termed Rajas because of their participation in the Nizam's Mughlai administration and court culture. As modern educational and legal systems developed in Hyderabad and north Indian Goswami practices in British India began to influence Hyderabad's Goswamis, they moved from Goswami law governing guru-chela successions and inheritances to Hindu family law governing marriage and inheritance. The nominally ascetic bankers and their dependents became householders following new occupations, developing an endogamous marriage network and self-identifying as a caste. Evidence about Gosains in Mirzapur and Varanasi strengthens the argument that educational and legal alternatives helped empower the women and children associated with the maths and develop a Goswami caste in Hyderabad.

Important recent works on the Mughal state and women in the Indo-Muslim world have not considered courtesans or tawa'ifs, the singing and dancing women employed by Indo-Muslim states and nobles, to be significant participants in politics and society. Drawing on detailed archival data from late nineteenth century Hyderabad state and other historical materials, I argue that courtesans were often elite women, cultural standard-setters and wielders of political power. Women whose art and learning gained them properties and alliances with powerful men, they were political players in precolonial India and in the princely states. They successfully negotiated administrative reforms in princely states like Hyderabad, continuing to secure protection and patronage while in British India they began to be classified as prostitutes. Colonial and modern India have been less than kind to courtesans and their artistic traditions, and more research needs to be done on the history of courtesans and their communities.

AbstractAlthough the misreading of Hyderabad's early nineteenth century banking firm, Palmer and Company, as scandalous, illegal, and usurious in its business practices was contested at the time in Hyderabad, and at the highest levels of the East India Company in both Calcutta and London, such conspiracy theories have prevailed and are here challenged. The Eurasian William Palmer and his partner, the Gujarati banker, Benkati Das, are best understood as indigenoussahukarsor bankers. Their firm functioned like other Indian banking firms and was in competition with them in the early nineteenth century as Hyderabad State dealt with the increasing power of the British East India Company and its man-on-the-spot, the Resident. Historians need to look beyond the English language East India Company records to contextualize this important banking firm more accurately.

Important recent works on the Mughal state and women in the Indo-Muslim world have not considered courtesans or tawa'ifs, the singing and dancing women employed by Indo-Muslim states and nobles, to be significant participants in politics and society. Drawing on detailed archival data from late nineteenth century Hyderabad state and other historical materials, I argue that courtesans were often elite women, cultural standard-setters and wielders of political power. Women whose art and learning gained them properties and alliances with powerful men, they were political players in precolonial India and in the princely states. They successfully negotiated administrative reforms in princely states like Hyderabad, continuing to secure protection and patronage while in British India they began to be classified as prostitutes. Colonial and modern India have been less than kind to courtesans and their artistic traditions, and more research needs to be done on the history of courtesans and their communities.

Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia. Filippo Osella and Katy Gardner, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004. 380 pp.

Sandhya Shukla has written a highly interdisciplinary comparison of Indian diasporic cultures in Britain and the United States. Specializing in Anthropology and Asian American Studies, she is particularly strong on historical and literary text analysis. She says, "The relational aspects of a range of texts and experiences, which include historical narratives, cultural organizations, autobiography and fiction, musical performance and films, are of paramount importance in this critical ethnography" (20). Contending that the Indian diaspora confronts "a simultaneous nationalism and internationalism," she is celebratory about India and "formations of Indianness," and uses phrases like "amazing force" and "wildly multicultural" (17). Her exploration shows "the tremendous impulse to multiple nationality that Indianness abroad has made visible" (14) and, "the amazing persistence of Indian cultures in so many places" (22).