Aspiring India: The politics of mothering, education reforms, and English / Mathew, Leya.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Mathew, Leya, author.

Contributor:

Hall, Kathleen, 1957- degree supervisor.

Lukose, Ritty, degree committee member.

Jackson, John L., Jr., 1944 July-, degree committee member.

Hall, Kathleen, 1957- degree committee member.

University of Pennsylvania. Education, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education.

South Asian studies.

Education--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Education.

Local Subjects:

Education.

South Asian studies.

Education--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Education.

Genre:

Academic theses.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 78-04A(E).

Place of Publication:

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation is an ethnography of aspirational mobilities emergent under contexts of profound material and social change. To explore the unprecedented expansion of educational aspirations in post market reform India, specifically surging parental desires for English-medium schooling, I conducted fieldwork at a low-fee private English-medium school and a neighboring state-funded Malayalam-medium school in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Further, to record state responses to non-elite educational aspirations, my fieldwork was distributed along diverse agencies that supported and regulated English learning in Kerala and across the country.

This dissertation makes two key arguments. Firstly, transitions from a previously austere socialist economy to a consumption saturated society has radically altered gendered everyday lives and unsettled entrenched social hierarchies. Negotiating these changes, non-elite mothers are reimagining possible futures for their children. Since social recognition and economic security was and continues to be entangled with higher education and English proficiencies, this has intensified desires for English-medium schooling from the earliest grades.

Secondly, intensifying non-elite desires for English learning reveals how educational systems in India are geared towards meeting the aspirations of privileged citizens. Analyzing the provision of English language learning in state-funded and private school systems, I argue that emergent emphases on conversational skills defines "knowing" English as predicated on the ability to socialize in English. While this shift benefits internationally mobile elite Indians, it marginalizes non-elite learning communities whose pedagogic resources are skewed towards literacy rather than orality skills. To conclude, aspirational mobilities in contemporary India are diverse and even oppositional, and dependent on aspirational locations as well as the resources that groups are able to mobilize.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.

Advisors: Kathleen D. Hall; Committee members: Kathleen D. Hall; John L. Jackson; Ritty Lukose.

Department: Education.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2016.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9781369338751

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.