Gender In South India Research Articles

We Called Her Peddamma: Caste, Gender, and Missionary Medicine in Guntur: 1880–1930

The medical work carried out by Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler in the town of Guntur (1880–1930), which was a part of the Telugu speaking region of the erstwhile Madras Presidency, as a foreign medical missionary associated with the mission field of the then General Synod of the Lutheran Church in America, constitutes a significant phase in the history of medicine and gender in South India. Despite bringing about visible changes in gender perceptions of medical professions, strangely, she or her work finds no mention in the social science literature on history of medicine in modern South India in general and coastal Andhra Pradesh in particular. This paper explores the nature and patterns of definitive changes that gender roles and patriarchal structures among the Telugus residing in coastal Andhra Pradesh have undergone after coming under the influence of a mission hospital in Guntur established by Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler. By doing so, it also brings out an analysis on how this medical institution transformed the firmly-held traditional perceptions and stereotypes on the sources of illness, disease, and treatments, and in turn laid the foundation for modern medicine to establish itself in South India.

Cord Blood Insulin Levels: It's Correlation with Gender, Birth Weight and Placental Weight in Term Newborns.

The cause of more insulin resistance in female than males are still unknown. To know the cause from early life, normal values of relevant parameters are required. So, aim of this study was to determine the reference levels of glucose and insulin in cord blood of term newborns and to examine their effects on gender, placental and birth weight of term newborns. In cross sectional study 60 consecutive term newborns were included from constituent hospitals. Placental and birth weights were measured and cord blood was collected for estimation of serum insulin and plasma glucose. Plasma glucose estimation was done by auto analyzer (GOD-POD method) and serum insulin analysis was done using Insulin ELISA Kit. After analysis, mean±2SD used for estimating cord blood insulin and glucose levels, which were 10.1±7.8μIU/mL and 67.8±33.8mg/dL respectively. Correlation of insulin with both birth weight and placental weight were r=0.359 and 0.41 respectively; p<0.001. Interestingly we found higher insulin levels in females as compared to male newborns in spite of having lower birth weight in them. In conclusion this study reported the levels of insulin and glucose in cord blood of term newborns. Incidentally, this is the first study as per our knowledge to report significant correlation between cord blood insulin, glucose with birth weight, placental weight and gender in south India. Female newborns had higher insulin levels than males, despite lesser birth weight can be attributed to intrinsic insulin resistance in them.

The Tragedy of Comedy: Staging Gender in South India

The Tragedy of Comedy: Staging Gender in South India Susan Seizer, Stigmas of Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India. Duke University Press, April 2005. There is one enigmatic moment in Keith Basso's classic ethnographic essay, Portraits of Whiteman: Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among Western Apache. As Basso lucidly explains, Western Apache joking about Whiteman works by creating Whiteman as a symbol of all that Western Apache is not, and thus effecting a humorous temporary inversion of proper social order while allowing Western Apaches to shore up their own social values and community cohesiveness. Joking-in form of impersonating overly talkative and inquisitive Whiteman-affords a temporary release by means of which Western Apaches can put a human face on power that subordinates them and dramatize their encounters with that power. But at end of eighty lucid pages, Basso suggests that, even armed with all this interpretation, there is something about humor that evades explanation. Lest we get caught up in endless analysis of these jokes, he writes, we should remember that the whole thing has been in fun. But, paradoxically, not really. Hello, my friend, how you doing?(Basso 1979, 82). No matter how many times I read Basso's book, this ending always haunts me long after I've closed book. First, because its uncertainty contrasts with certainty of Basso's preceding interpretations. Basso seems to be saying that extent to which something is funny is directly related to extent to which it is completely serious; that funniest jokes are those that threaten most to slip out of joking frame that contains them. This ending counters neatness of inversion model, according to which jokes are merely temporary inversions of social order, that Basso uses throughout book. And second, Basso's ending is striking because it marks point where interpretation gives way to repetition of joke itself, to its dramatic form. This is where Basso seems to hint at inadequacy of his symbolic approach for explaining why it is that these jokes take form of impersonations, why they are staged as little dramas, what kind of enjoyment Western Apache men get out of playing Whiteman, and how characters they play in jokes relate to their real-life roles. In other words, there is a whole realm of experience and fun that Basso's focus on meaning of these jokes, rather than their dramatic form and context, sidesteps. His ending, it seems to me, points to difference between treating these jokes as a cultural text and treating them as performance. Both of these issues-the blurring of joke with real life and importance of dramatic form-are at heart of Suzan Seizer's ethnographic study of popular South Indian theatrical form called Special Drama. In Stigmas of Tamil Stage, Seizer presents a remarkably nuanced account of relationships between onstage actions of Special Drama actors and actresses and dilemmas and difficulties of their offstage lives. In doing so, she offers insight into relationship between staging, dramatic form, and meaning. In Special Drama, staging can position performers and interpellate viewers, depending on their gender, quite differently. For, as we learn quite early in book, while artists who perform Special Drama are a community united by stigma they bear as low-class actors and actresses, this community is cleaved by gender (349). Stigma attaches to performers of Special Drama because they perform bawdy comedy, but this stigma falls most heavily on actresses because of gender norms of Tamil society. Actresses, in performing publicly, in interacting with unknown men publicly, transgress norms for respectable Tamil women. Their lives confound boundaries between public and private, between home and world, which anchor gender norms in Tamil Nadu, as well as in much of South Asia. …