Suchergebnisse

There is a great deal of controversy and debate on land acquisition and transactions concerning the economic development of India, particularly the rural parts of the country. This book explicates, from a sociological perspective, the effect of increasing land transactions on social mobility, based on a detailed study of selected villages in Lucknow, India. It argues that villages in modern India, particularly those close to cities, are no longer simple and integrated communities, but are, rather, more heterogeneous, complex and mobile, as a result of urban expansion and globalization. It contextualises land transactions in a political economic model, describing in detail the differential relationship between land and the state from ancient times to the present day, noting the different laws relating to land and their implications for rural life.

Also by Supriya Singh -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of Tables -- Part I: Introduction -- Chapter 1: Telling the Story of Five Decades of Indian Migration to Australia -- Early Indian Migrants to Australia -- Indian Migrants Quadruple, 1996-2011 -- Studying Money and Family Among Indian Migrants -- Two Phases of the Study -- Following the Family Across Borders and Over Time -- The Sociology of Money, Globalization and Communication Frame the Study -- The Connected Transnational Family -- Implications for Development, Migration and Remittance Infrastructure -- Notes

AbstractIn this article, I present a cross‐generational analysis of the gendered meanings and politics surrounding monetary remittances. Indian female migrants to Australia, who contribute significantly to household incomes, have recently started to question the sources and directions of remittances. This happens when the woman's earnings are sent, without consultation, to the husband's parents for luxuries, while the family in Australia is struggling. Women in paid work also want to send their earnings to their own parents, particularly if there is financial need. Remittances have become a testing ground for the traditional belief that the husband and his family own the money in the patrilineal marital household. It is possible to interpret male control of remittances without consultation as a form of financial abuse of the wife in the sending household. The article draws on two qualitative studies on five decades of Indian migration to Australia covering 203 people from 112 families.

The linking of money, family and migration has become increasingly important with the rise in Indian remittances to US$ 21.7 billion in 2004, the largest amount of remittances in the world. The economic importance of remittances has meant that they have primarily been studied as money flows resulting from direct migration. Some attention has been paid to their economic impact at the local, regional and national levels in India. In this article, I argue that sociologists and anthropologists have much to contribute to the study of remittances, as a social phenomenon linked to family and migration. The emergence of a transnational Indian family also means the development of a special kind of transnational family money, where money is equated with or measured against filial care. In the global context of migration, remittances are one of the ways families negotiate shifting arrangements of care, responsibility and security for the young, for women and for the elderly. These perspectives will help develop the sociology of money in India, connecting it to migration, family, marriage and gender relationships.

In the United States and Australia, men and women use the internet in nearly equal measure, whereas in Japan, India and China, men continue to dominate internet use. This article focuses on gender differences in the use of the internet at home as seen from women's perspectives and draws particularly on open-ended interviews in 1999 with 30 middle-income Anglo-Celtic women with internet access in urban and rural areas of Australia. The study found that women generally use the internet as a tool for activities, rather than as play or a technology to be mastered. This partially explains why women farmers use the internet more extensively than their farmer husbands. When women become comfortable with technology - as with the telephone or the PC on a farm - women see it as a tool rather than a technology. Women's continued discomfort with technology thus remains at the centre of the social construct of gender and technology.

There is seemingly little connection between conversations about electronic commerce at an OECD workshop in San Francisco and talk of ritual cash payments at a Maori funeral in New Zealand. Yet money is at the centre of both conversations. There is a hesitant acceptance in regional policy dialogues that the cultural meanings of money have to be taken into account before any consensus is possible on issues of electronic commerce. Recent sociological work on money is also questioning the duality of the market and society. In the last five years, there has also been interesting sociological work showing how social relations and cultural values shape different kinds of market, domestic and personal monies. It is also revealing the cultural distinctiveness of the media and forms of transfers. Sociologists of money, particularly in the United Kingdom, have addressed the management and control of money in the household and how these relate to social welfare payments. Sociologists are also addressing the use and non-use of electronic money in the home, relating it to social inclusion and exclusion. Policy makers and sociologists of money have areas of common interest. However, sociologists are mostly absent from this policy debate on electronic commerce. The challenge for sociologists is to first connect the new information and communication technologies to changes in the medium, form, meaning and relationships of money. We can then begin to forge a language that can address issues of electronic commerce and culture.