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Mothers and Teachers: Gender and Class in Educational Proposals for and by Women in Colonial Bengal
Author(s) -
BANNERJI HIMANI
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6443.1992.tb00021.x
Subject(s) - bengali , bengal , hegemony , gender studies , agency (philosophy) , colonialism , politics , sociology , context (archaeology) , middle class , cultural reproduction , social class , reproduction , social science , political science , law , history , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , bay , biology
This paper explores social reform as hegemonic practice, as part of a general attempt to gain moral, cultural and political leadership (Gramsci). It also claims any hegemonic practice to be gendered. Examining magazine writings by Bengali middle class women at the turn of the 19th Century on Women's education, the article displays an internal struggle on the ground of gender and patriarch, as the women seek to gain agency in a substantive way. while co‐operating within the whole class's agenda. It particularly examines the concept of motherhood, in the context of moral education, and locates this concern in the changing forms in social reproduction, especially in the situation of a new home or private life in the middle classes of Bengal.