SEWA in relief: Gendered Geographies of Disaster Relief in Gujarat, India
Open Access
- Author:
- Sabhlok, Anu
- Graduate Program:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 08, 2006
- Committee Members:
- Melissa Wright, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Lorraine Dowler, Committee Member
James Mc Carthy, Committee Member
Mrinalini Sinha, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Disaster relief
Gujarat
seva
SEWA
Postcolonial
Gandhi
Feminist Geography
NGOs
Economic liberalization
India
Women - Abstract:
- The discourse of seva – selfless service - works within the spaces of the family, community and the nation in India to produce gendered subjects that are particular to their geographic and historic location. This study is a geographic analysis of the discourse of seva as it materializes in the context of disaster relief work in the economically liberalizing and religiously fragmented state of Gujarat in India. I conducted ethnographic research in Ahmedabad, Gujarat during 2002-2005 and focused my inquiry on women from an organization whose name itself means service––SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association. SEWA is the world’s largest trade union of informal sector workers and much has been written about SEWA’s union activity, trade and production cooperatives, legal battles, and micro-credit success stories. However, despite SEWA’s almost 30 years of active engagement in disaster relief, there is not a single text focusing on SEWA’s activism in terms of its relief work. I chose SEWA for several reasons, the most important one being its well defined political ideology and an explicitly stated vision for the ‘Indian nation,’ which is inspired by Gandhian and feminist philosophies. The project emphasizes the spatial negotiations that SEWA workers engage in as they perform their relief work in a complex field dominated by international relief organizations, local caste and religion based groups, national and state establishments and political parties. I argue that SEWA women are able to carve out a niche for themselves in this crowded field, precisely because of their political strategy of labeling themselves as ‘local’ and claiming of their relief work as seva.