"This is an important intervention that reveals how critical it is to understand historical and sociological contexts of the female foeticide problem in Punjab. Purewal carefully, lucidly analyses how development and policy approaches have formulated the issue but have been unable to address it because of long-standing misperceptions and biases. She argues instead that it is attention to the complex question of gender and women's agency and subjectivity that is urgently required."
"An accessible and stimulating book for students, academics, and anyone interested in this highly sensitive and contentious issue, Son Preference provides a valuable addition to anthropological and sociological analyses and proposes new directions for ethnographic research."The preference for male children transcends many societies and cultures, making it an issue of local and global dimensions. While son preference is not a new phenomenon and has existed historically in many parts of Asia, its contemporary expressions illustrate the gendered outcomes of social power relations as they interact and intersect with culture, economy and technologies.
Son Preference brings together key debates on the subject of son preference by assessing existing work in the field and providing new insights through primary research. The book covers a broad range of social science discussions and draws upon textual and ethnographic material from India
Son Preference will be useful to students, scholars, activists and anyone interested in the issues surrounding gender inequity, sex selection and skewed sex ratios
The preference for male children transcends many societies and cultures, making it an issue of local and global dimensions. While son preference is not a new phenomenon and has existed historically in many parts of Asia, its contemporary expressions illustrate the gendered outcomes of social power relations as they interact and intersect with culture, economy and technologies. Son Preference brings together key debates on the subject by assessing existing work in the field and providing new insights through primary research. The book covers a broad range of social science discussions and draws upon textual and ethnographic material from India. Son Preference will be useful to students, scholars, activists and anyone interested in the issues surrounding gender inequity, sex selection and skewed sex ratios.
