Human Rights as Practice

Dalit Women Securing Livelihood Entitlements in South India

Jayshree P. Mangubhai

Draws upon and debates existing literature in related fields, outlining a conceptual framework of analysis.
Socially engaged in critiquing existing theoretical and practical concerns and putting out suggestions for practice.
It presents the undercurrents and real practices of livelihood strategies and collective action in a society still deeply rooted in caste hierarchies.
The focus is unique, both in terms of a fairly invisible social group being made visible in ways beyond statistics, and the topic of their public-political action.
This book also brings to the fore the perspective of the Dalit women involved in the struggle - that was less visible until now.

Human Rights as Practice

Dalit Women Securing Livelihood Entitlements in South India

Jayshree P. Mangubhai

Description

This book investigates how Dalit women in rural south India secure livelihood entitlements by analysing processes of social exclusion as well as collective action by these women. This requires a focus on how caste, class and gender mutually construct each other and shape social relations of power within specific contexts. These intersecting axes of difference are expressed in the social norms and practices embedded in state, societal and family institutions, which influence the operation of interacting entitlement systems - the regularised arrangements for establishing claims to resources such as law, state provisioning and informal/social institutions - and, therefore, the legitimacy accorded to resource claims. Central to understanding the process of Dalit women's livelihood entitlement struggles and the outcomes, therefore, are the power dynamics between these women and different state and non-state actors, which continuously condition and, in turn, are conditioned by Dalit women's collective action.

The complexities of this process are analysed through three ethnographic case studies set in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The case studies highlight two types of entitlement struggles - one to secure entitlements and the other to protect existing inadequate entitlements. These struggles are socially negotiated and politically constructed by these women with the support of internal/external development brokers. The case studies offer insights into the (re)conceptualisation of human rights and strategies to secure rights-based freedoms and entitlements that aim to transform historically and contextually specific relations of subordination. The findings of this research thus contribute to bridging the divide between human rights law and its practice as embodied in collective struggle.

Human Rights as Practice

Dalit Women Securing Livelihood Entitlements in South India

Jayshree P. Mangubhai

Acknowledgements
1. : Situating Dalit Women within Rights and Development
2. : Collective Action, Exclusion and Entitlements
3. : Political Responses to Social Exclusion and Discrimination: State Discourses and Practices
4. : Asserting the Right to Adequate Housing: Kovilur Village
5. : Ongoing Struggle for Land Entitlement: Vettriyur Village
6. : Uneven Political-Economics of an Entitlement Struggle: Mallibakkam Village
7. : Human Rights as Practice: Agency, Power and Strategies
Glossary
Bibliography

Human Rights as Practice

Dalit Women Securing Livelihood Entitlements in South India

Jayshree P. Mangubhai

Author Information

Jayshree P. Mangubhai, Director, Research and Programme, Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion, New Delhi

Jayshree P. Mangubhai is Research Programme Director at the Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion in New Delhi. She has worked as a consultant in the human rights and development field in India for the past 13 years, with a particular focus on the rights of Dalits and Adivasis, especially women of these communities. She completed her PhD from the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands in 2012.