Professor Ritty Lukose (PhD Anthropology Chicago 2001)

Colloquium "‘Modelling Development’: Kerala on the Global Stage"

Thursday, December 8th, 2:00-3:30pm

363 Grace Dodge Hall

Open to all

Refreshments will be served.

Following the presentation Professor Lukose will meet with students from 4:00-5:00pm (138 Horace Mann; open to ITS Department).

 ~~~

“‘Modelling Development’: Kerala on the Global Stage”

Drawing on ethnographic approaches to the study of transnational processes and institutions, this presentation charts the rise of a “global gender infrastructure” that lays the groundwork for more contemporary discourses and institutional transformation of women and girl’s development and education today. My focus is a 1975 report that defined what has come to be called “The Kerala Model of Development”.  This report highlights Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast of India, as an example of a highly touted, globally circulating “model” for development with its achievements in the area of gender, particularly women’s and girl’s health, literacy and education. This model came into being in the mid-1970s, linking the region to the international development apparatus, just as the transformations we currently associate with "neoliberalism" were taking shape. What was this "model" an alternative to in the mid-1970s? What is it an alternative to now? This paper addresses these questions as part of a larger exploration of our understandings of gender, development and neoliberalism.

~~~

Ritty Lukose is Associate Professor at The Gallatin School of New York University. Her teaching and research interests explore culture, politics, and economy as they intersect with discourses and practices of gender across the varied terrain of globalization, especially as they impact contemporary South Asia. As an anthropologist, she has researched and published on education, youth, gender, development, globalization and culture. Professor Lukose's research has been funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright Program, the Spencer Foundation, and the National Academy of Education, and she has published several book chapters and articles on this research in journals such as Cultural Anthropology, Social History, Social Analysis, and Anthropology and Education Quarterly among others. Her books include Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Duke, 2009) and a co-edited book, South Asian Feminisms(Duke, 2012).