Anindita Chatterjee - Böcker

This book is a cultural exploration of health and wellness, with a focus on impacts of Covid-19 on the population of India. The chapters in this book present original research, systematic reviews, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, encompassing multidisciplinary, inter- and intra-disciplinary fields of study, in the context of how culture and disease sufficiently unpack and inform each other. The book includes contributions from the social sciences and the humanities and analyses issues that range from smallpox to the history of vaccine, indigenous healing practices, the Macbeth paradigm, Zizekian encounters, mental asylum, and marginalised genders. Using the theme of intellectual interconnectedness in the times of self-isolation and social distancing, the book is a collaboration of critical thinkers who identify and visibilize the hidden global issues related to ‘disease’ and ‘health’ that have divided the world into narrow binaries – individual/society, poor/rich, proletariat/bourgeoisie, margin/centre, colonised/coloniser, servitude/liberty, powerless/powerful. By doing so, the book emphasises the potential of holistic wellness to improve human life and humanity across the globe. A novel contribution on the cultural factors that played an important role in contemporary times of Covid-19, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Cultural Studies, Health and Society and South Asian Studies.

This book is a cultural exploration of health and wellness, with a focus on impacts of Covid-19 on the population of India. The chapters in this book present original research, systematic reviews, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, encompassing multidisciplinary, inter- and intra-disciplinary fields of study, in the context of how culture and disease sufficiently unpack and inform each other. The book includes contributions from the social sciences and the humanities and analyses issues that range from smallpox to the history of vaccine, indigenous healing practices, the Macbeth paradigm, Zizekian encounters, mental asylum, and marginalised genders. Using the theme of intellectual interconnectedness in the times of self-isolation and social distancing, the book is a collaboration of critical thinkers who identify and visibilize the hidden global issues related to ‘disease’ and ‘health’ that have divided the world into narrow binaries – individual/society, poor/rich, proletariat/bourgeoisie, margin/centre, colonised/coloniser, servitude/liberty, powerless/powerful. By doing so, the book emphasises the potential of holistic wellness to improve human life and humanity across the globe. A novel contribution on the cultural factors that played an important role in contemporary times of Covid-19, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Cultural Studies, Health and Society and South Asian Studies.

This novel volume presents an ethnography of the gendered dynamics of informal labour relations in three cosmopolitan cities in India—Kolkata, Delhi, and Noida—in order to analyse women’s agency and identity formation in the domestic labour sphere in India.Structured around an extensive set of in-depth narratives from female workers and employers, chapters reveal how employers and workers use language to express reciprocal support and care. Novel in its focus on affect—including the emotions, moods, and atmospheres that emerge from, and shape, the conditions of labour—chapters demonstrate the mutual, bi-directional "affective attachments" and dependencies that are formed between employers and workers through practices of mutual care. The book explores the construction of gender identities among workers, in part shaped by a variety of other intersecting relationships, including caste, ethnicity, and religion. As well as an exploration of worker-employer relations within the employers’ homes, the book also examines the squatter settlements of workers, uncovering aspects of workers’ domestic lives, relationships with each other, and broader relationships between transregional and trans-border migrants.Examining a space where gender, migration, language, and emotion intersect, this book will be of interest to researchers studying gender, South Asian studies, anthropology, labour studies, migration studies, and urban studies.