Santi Rozario | The University of Sydney (original) (raw)
Papers by Santi Rozario
Culture and religion, Jul 1, 2009
... In Modernities and maternities: Colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific... more ... In Modernities and maternities: Colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific , Edited by: Ram, Kalpana and Jolly, Margaret. 144–76. ... In Hands not land: How livelihoods are changing in rural Bangladesh , Edited by: Toufique, Kazi Ali and Turton, Cate. 121–30. ...
Routledge eBooks, Jul 29, 2020
Diversity and equality in health and care, 2005
Resources for Feminist Research, Oct 1, 1992
As feminists attempt to integrate race, ethnicity and religion into their understanding of how ge... more As feminists attempt to integrate race, ethnicity and religion into their understanding of how gender is constructed and experienced, one of the most difficult tasks has been in understanding the relationship between gender oppression and the politics of marginalized groups or communities. In 1985, at the Nairobi Conference for the United Nations Decade for Women, Third World feminists raised the importance of anti - racist political struggles for women in the Third World. In particular, Palestinian women and South African women asked how they could press for gender equality amid racial discrimination. Similarly in Canada, Britain and the United States, women of colour have struggled with the difficulties in raising issues of family violence in their communities in the context of the racist imagery of men of colour.Underlying the dilemma for women in marginalized communities is the tension between competing goals. On the one hand, women in these communities suffer the consequences of economic, political and social marginality faced by all members of their communities, and thus are integrally linked to any struggle which challenges such marginalization. On the other hand, women in these communities face daily forms of gender oppression in their private, political and work lives, and often find that these issues are excluded from ethnic movements.For decades feminists in minority communities have struggled with ways in which to resolve the dilemmas posed by such tensions. For the most part, they have analyzed the kinds of roles women play in ethnic struggles and the potentiality of these movements for gender equality. Often overlooked in this debate, however, is that ethnic and communal movements may themselves promote particular kinds of gender ideologies and oppression. The two books that are reviewed here make an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between ethnic movements and gender oppression as they both investigate the ways in which communal movements in South Asia have shaped the character of gender roles and ideologies. Moreover, these two books are extremely timely as the recent wave of ethnic and religious mobilization in South Asia as well as many other areas of the world, which often are associated with repressive gender practices, has placed a new urgency to understanding the relationship between communal mobilization andgender equality.In this light the reader can appreciate the contributions of Shahida Lateef's Muslim Women In India: Political And Private Realities and Santi Rozario's Purity And Communal Boundaries: Women And Social Change In A Bangladeshi Village. The authors of these books both set out to examine the influence of social and economic marginalization on the ways in which gender relations and ideologies have been constructed in "minority" South Asian communities. Lateef focusses on Muslim communities in India, while Rozario examines Christian villagers in Bangladesh. In their investigations into the experience of marginalization, both writers identify the use of religion to construct a group identity as raising significant implications for how gender relations are experienced by women in these communities. Although the two books differ in many respects, both analyses demonstrate that in these communities gender ideologies and relations play a central role in maintaining group boundaries, especially as symbols of difference and identity. Taken together both books begin to provide key pieces to the picture of how communalism has shaped gender relations, ideologies and practices in South Asia.In Muslim Women In India: Political And Private Realities, Shahida Lateef seeks to explore gender relations in Muslim communities in India. Her central thesis is that the status and role of women in Muslim communities has been shaped by the community's perception of themselves as a minority. In this context, she argues that for Muslim Indians religious customs and traditions, such as Muslim Personal Law, have come to serve as symbols of community unity. …
In this chapter we will be examining attitudes to marriage among young British Bangladeshi women.... more In this chapter we will be examining attitudes to marriage among young British Bangladeshi women. We see the move to new forms of Muslim piety among these women as related in part to the problems posed by marriage in the contemporary British environment. New Islamic groups provide both social and intellectual resources that may help to resolve difficulties and issues in relation to marriage and the family, including tension between Western models of romantic love and marriage and the desire to behave in a proper Islamic way. At the same time, the specific forms of Islamic practice adopted may also be constitutive of a new sense of self and a new identity which carries along with it a new and different sense of what the marital relationship, the woman’s relationship to her own body and self and her relationship to her present or future children might be.
Culture and religion, Jun 1, 2012
The papers in this special issue derive from an international workshop held at St Michael's Colle... more The papers in this special issue derive from an international workshop held at St Michael's College, Cardiff in November 2010. The workshop was funded by a grant from the UK Economic and Research Council, 1 which supported a three-year research project on Islam, young Bangladeshis, marriage and the family in Bangladesh and the UK. Two of the papers in this special issue (Rozario, and Samuel) originated in the research project funded by that grant, and some further details regarding it can be found in those papers and in other of our publications (see in particular Rozario and Samuel 2010, 2011, forthcoming a, forthcoming b; Rozario 2011; Samuel 2011). Both of these papers present material from the UK and from Bangladesh. Our aim in the project as a whole was not so much to contrast developments in the two countries as to understand the increasingly global context within which young Bangladeshis, and many other young people from Muslim and other backgrounds, live today. We were particularly interested in young people who were choosing to take on and live out an actively Muslim identity in their lives. Some of these people are part of transnational families, and have needed to make sense in their own lives of identities deriving from multiple locations, Western and Asian, secular and Islamic. All are living in a world in which global connectedness in the form of mobile phones, internet and social networking is a basic presupposition. The Islam with which they engage is both the Islam of their parental generations and the Islam of a variety of contemporary reformist movements, authors and organisations. Samuel's paper presents a general background to our study, sketching the history of the Bangladeshi community within the UK as a background to the lives of the young people we were studying, and looking at the differing roles of Islam in Bangladesh and among the British South Asian communities. It also introduces one of the key theoretical concepts of our research, the life project. Rozario's paper looks at a specific issue that characterised many of her interviewees, the idea of the contemporary world and contemporary society as uncertain and threatening, and Islam as a source of security and confidence, especially in relation to marriage. Rozario's interviewees both in Bangladesh and in
Womens Studies International Forum, Nov 1, 1998
Synopsis-The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges u... more Synopsis-The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges upon the role of Muslim women. The role and status of Australian Muslim women, in turn, can only be understood by considering the cumulative impact of the situation in which Muslims find themselves in Australia, religiopolitical developments in the Muslim world, and the recent developments in the international politics between the Islamic world and the West. Muslim women are caught in the middle. On the one hand, they feel it essential to demonstrate their loyalty, symbolized through veiling of an increasing number of Muslim women, to the world Islamic Ummah [community]. But by doing so they place themselves on the margin of the wider Australian community to whom Muslim women's veiling symbolizes the "Other," the peculiar and dangerous foreigners. This article deals with these dilemmas of Australian Muslim women and their role as defenders of Islamic heritage.
Mankind (Sydney), Feb 10, 2009
... Leaning on a long stick Bahar (an ally of Taher and Abed) stood next to Fazlu as if to guard ... more ... Leaning on a long stick Bahar (an ally of Taher and Abed) stood next to Fazlu as if to guard him from escaping or prevent him from reacting violently. After the commotion associated with the chota-pora had settled down the men divided into two main groups. ...
Womens Studies International Forum, Mar 1, 2001
Synopsis-The Bangladeshi university system has been open to women since its beginnings in 1921. I... more Synopsis-The Bangladeshi university system has been open to women since its beginnings in 1921. In practice, however, Bangladeshi social norms place many limitations in the way of female students. The increasing politicization of the universities in recent years has led to campuses being dominated by male student cliques allied to whichever party is ruling at the time. This has further worsened the situation of female students, as a recent series of events at Jahangirnagar University, the second university of Dhaka, illustrates. In 1998, a group of male students were involved in several rape incidents on the campus. The University was reluctant to take action, because the offenders had powerful political connections, and the resulting protest campaign led to a widespread discussion in the Bangladeshi media. In this article, I consider these events. I show how Bangladeshi social norms have brought about an effective and worsening "culture of exclusion" for female students and academic staff, and also discuss the attempts by staff (mainly female) and students to counter this situation and to claim the campus as a space in which women are able to take a full role.
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Dec 1, 1997
Womens Studies International Forum, Jul 1, 2006
Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2020
Contemporary Islam, Jun 29, 2011
One might suppose that a foundational element of proper Muslim behaviour is respect for one's par... more One might suppose that a foundational element of proper Muslim behaviour is respect for one's parents. However, it is not unusual in the contemporary Islamic world, both in Muslim-majority countries and in the diaspora, for young people to be much more 'Islamic' in behaviour, dress and lifestyle than their parents. As this may suggest, modernist Islamic piety is not infrequently directed by young people against their parents, as a mode of resistance to parental authority. However, wearing the hijab, becoming a follower of a Sufi shaykh, or marrying a 'good' Muslim spouse from another ethnic group to one's own, are different kinds of resistance from, for example, joining an inner-city youth gang, or rejecting one's parents' Asian cultural background for a more globalised identity. Dr Rozario will discuss some of the ways in which Islamic piety can be deployed in resistance to parental authority through case-studies from her ESRC-funded field research in Bangladesh and the UK, and consider in what ways these forms of behaviour resemble, and differ from, more familiar forms of resistance.
Womens Studies International Forum, Jul 1, 2006
Bangladeshi women are subjected to patriarchal norms that are legitimated by both the cultural an... more Bangladeshi women are subjected to patriarchal norms that are legitimated by both the cultural and the religious values of the country. In recent years these patriarchal norms have been challenged by women's increased physical mobility, a consequence of modernity and globalisation. There has however been a backlash against women's new roles. At the same time, a significant proportion of the newly mobile women, including university students, is adopting the burqa (veil), a practice associated with modern Islamist movements and previously almost non-existent in Bangladesh. This article discusses the implications of Islamist movements and their activities in the country for the rights of Bangladeshi women. The body of the article is concerned mainly with the impact of Islamist movements on women's daily lives, and includes an analysis of why some women have recently begun to adopt the burqa and a more Islamic identity.
Journal of Genetic Counseling, May 12, 2007
In this article, I analyse a narrative by Rohima 1 , a Bangladeshi woman now living in the UK who... more In this article, I analyse a narrative by Rohima 1 , a Bangladeshi woman now living in the UK who was diagnosed in adulthood as having NF1 (neurofibromatosis). While some themes in her narrative account resemble those of persons with NF1 in the general European and American population, other themes relate specifically to Bangladeshi cultural issues and practices. These particularly concern gender, sexual identity and marriage. As a young woman, Rohima's dark skin coloration and the tumors or lumps associated with her condition led her parents and relatives to regard her as unmarriageable and in effect, despite her evident intelligence and competence, to deny that she was a woman. Bangladeshi men and women alike found her appearance a bar to any social acceptability. Even after her marriage (to a non-Bangladeshi man), her family have been unwilling to accept her and her children fully into their kinship network. The article explores the consequences of genetic disorders such as NF1 in cultures where social identity and concepts of personhood, particularly for women, are inextricably related to appearance and to judgements regarding marriageability.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Feb 26, 1998
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 1, 2012
In order to make sense of how British Bangladeshis respond to and cope with genetic disorder and ... more In order to make sense of how British Bangladeshis respond to and cope with genetic disorder and associated medical illness, we need to understand Bangladeshi social, cultural, and religious life in its British context. In this interconnected global village, it is not only science, technologies, or commodities that travel across the many national boundaries, but also ideas, values, and religion. Thus to talk of one culture being clearly distinct from another culture is na·ive, to say the least (Clarke & Parsons 1997:1). The cultural and religious values that influence British Bangladeshis in relation to genetics are therefore fluid and complex. Minimally, one needs to bear in mind the transnational nature of British Bangladeshi families· and the strong familial ties they maintain with their relatives in Sylhet, where most of the Bangladeshi migrants come from. Through these ongoing ties, Bangladesh impacts directly on their own beliefs, values, and culture in general. The chapter provides an overview on the British Bangladeshis, followed by their ideas about illness including beliefs about spirit causation ( upri , bhut , nazar ). We then discuss the British Bangladeshis and the Islamic position on genetics, followed by the various misunderstandings and confUsion about genetics on the part of our interviewees.
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Jul 1, 1986
Culture and religion, Jul 1, 2009
... In Modernities and maternities: Colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific... more ... In Modernities and maternities: Colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific , Edited by: Ram, Kalpana and Jolly, Margaret. 144–76. ... In Hands not land: How livelihoods are changing in rural Bangladesh , Edited by: Toufique, Kazi Ali and Turton, Cate. 121–30. ...
Routledge eBooks, Jul 29, 2020
Diversity and equality in health and care, 2005
Resources for Feminist Research, Oct 1, 1992
As feminists attempt to integrate race, ethnicity and religion into their understanding of how ge... more As feminists attempt to integrate race, ethnicity and religion into their understanding of how gender is constructed and experienced, one of the most difficult tasks has been in understanding the relationship between gender oppression and the politics of marginalized groups or communities. In 1985, at the Nairobi Conference for the United Nations Decade for Women, Third World feminists raised the importance of anti - racist political struggles for women in the Third World. In particular, Palestinian women and South African women asked how they could press for gender equality amid racial discrimination. Similarly in Canada, Britain and the United States, women of colour have struggled with the difficulties in raising issues of family violence in their communities in the context of the racist imagery of men of colour.Underlying the dilemma for women in marginalized communities is the tension between competing goals. On the one hand, women in these communities suffer the consequences of economic, political and social marginality faced by all members of their communities, and thus are integrally linked to any struggle which challenges such marginalization. On the other hand, women in these communities face daily forms of gender oppression in their private, political and work lives, and often find that these issues are excluded from ethnic movements.For decades feminists in minority communities have struggled with ways in which to resolve the dilemmas posed by such tensions. For the most part, they have analyzed the kinds of roles women play in ethnic struggles and the potentiality of these movements for gender equality. Often overlooked in this debate, however, is that ethnic and communal movements may themselves promote particular kinds of gender ideologies and oppression. The two books that are reviewed here make an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between ethnic movements and gender oppression as they both investigate the ways in which communal movements in South Asia have shaped the character of gender roles and ideologies. Moreover, these two books are extremely timely as the recent wave of ethnic and religious mobilization in South Asia as well as many other areas of the world, which often are associated with repressive gender practices, has placed a new urgency to understanding the relationship between communal mobilization andgender equality.In this light the reader can appreciate the contributions of Shahida Lateef's Muslim Women In India: Political And Private Realities and Santi Rozario's Purity And Communal Boundaries: Women And Social Change In A Bangladeshi Village. The authors of these books both set out to examine the influence of social and economic marginalization on the ways in which gender relations and ideologies have been constructed in "minority" South Asian communities. Lateef focusses on Muslim communities in India, while Rozario examines Christian villagers in Bangladesh. In their investigations into the experience of marginalization, both writers identify the use of religion to construct a group identity as raising significant implications for how gender relations are experienced by women in these communities. Although the two books differ in many respects, both analyses demonstrate that in these communities gender ideologies and relations play a central role in maintaining group boundaries, especially as symbols of difference and identity. Taken together both books begin to provide key pieces to the picture of how communalism has shaped gender relations, ideologies and practices in South Asia.In Muslim Women In India: Political And Private Realities, Shahida Lateef seeks to explore gender relations in Muslim communities in India. Her central thesis is that the status and role of women in Muslim communities has been shaped by the community's perception of themselves as a minority. In this context, she argues that for Muslim Indians religious customs and traditions, such as Muslim Personal Law, have come to serve as symbols of community unity. …
In this chapter we will be examining attitudes to marriage among young British Bangladeshi women.... more In this chapter we will be examining attitudes to marriage among young British Bangladeshi women. We see the move to new forms of Muslim piety among these women as related in part to the problems posed by marriage in the contemporary British environment. New Islamic groups provide both social and intellectual resources that may help to resolve difficulties and issues in relation to marriage and the family, including tension between Western models of romantic love and marriage and the desire to behave in a proper Islamic way. At the same time, the specific forms of Islamic practice adopted may also be constitutive of a new sense of self and a new identity which carries along with it a new and different sense of what the marital relationship, the woman’s relationship to her own body and self and her relationship to her present or future children might be.
Culture and religion, Jun 1, 2012
The papers in this special issue derive from an international workshop held at St Michael's Colle... more The papers in this special issue derive from an international workshop held at St Michael's College, Cardiff in November 2010. The workshop was funded by a grant from the UK Economic and Research Council, 1 which supported a three-year research project on Islam, young Bangladeshis, marriage and the family in Bangladesh and the UK. Two of the papers in this special issue (Rozario, and Samuel) originated in the research project funded by that grant, and some further details regarding it can be found in those papers and in other of our publications (see in particular Rozario and Samuel 2010, 2011, forthcoming a, forthcoming b; Rozario 2011; Samuel 2011). Both of these papers present material from the UK and from Bangladesh. Our aim in the project as a whole was not so much to contrast developments in the two countries as to understand the increasingly global context within which young Bangladeshis, and many other young people from Muslim and other backgrounds, live today. We were particularly interested in young people who were choosing to take on and live out an actively Muslim identity in their lives. Some of these people are part of transnational families, and have needed to make sense in their own lives of identities deriving from multiple locations, Western and Asian, secular and Islamic. All are living in a world in which global connectedness in the form of mobile phones, internet and social networking is a basic presupposition. The Islam with which they engage is both the Islam of their parental generations and the Islam of a variety of contemporary reformist movements, authors and organisations. Samuel's paper presents a general background to our study, sketching the history of the Bangladeshi community within the UK as a background to the lives of the young people we were studying, and looking at the differing roles of Islam in Bangladesh and among the British South Asian communities. It also introduces one of the key theoretical concepts of our research, the life project. Rozario's paper looks at a specific issue that characterised many of her interviewees, the idea of the contemporary world and contemporary society as uncertain and threatening, and Islam as a source of security and confidence, especially in relation to marriage. Rozario's interviewees both in Bangladesh and in
Womens Studies International Forum, Nov 1, 1998
Synopsis-The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges u... more Synopsis-The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges upon the role of Muslim women. The role and status of Australian Muslim women, in turn, can only be understood by considering the cumulative impact of the situation in which Muslims find themselves in Australia, religiopolitical developments in the Muslim world, and the recent developments in the international politics between the Islamic world and the West. Muslim women are caught in the middle. On the one hand, they feel it essential to demonstrate their loyalty, symbolized through veiling of an increasing number of Muslim women, to the world Islamic Ummah [community]. But by doing so they place themselves on the margin of the wider Australian community to whom Muslim women's veiling symbolizes the "Other," the peculiar and dangerous foreigners. This article deals with these dilemmas of Australian Muslim women and their role as defenders of Islamic heritage.
Mankind (Sydney), Feb 10, 2009
... Leaning on a long stick Bahar (an ally of Taher and Abed) stood next to Fazlu as if to guard ... more ... Leaning on a long stick Bahar (an ally of Taher and Abed) stood next to Fazlu as if to guard him from escaping or prevent him from reacting violently. After the commotion associated with the chota-pora had settled down the men divided into two main groups. ...
Womens Studies International Forum, Mar 1, 2001
Synopsis-The Bangladeshi university system has been open to women since its beginnings in 1921. I... more Synopsis-The Bangladeshi university system has been open to women since its beginnings in 1921. In practice, however, Bangladeshi social norms place many limitations in the way of female students. The increasing politicization of the universities in recent years has led to campuses being dominated by male student cliques allied to whichever party is ruling at the time. This has further worsened the situation of female students, as a recent series of events at Jahangirnagar University, the second university of Dhaka, illustrates. In 1998, a group of male students were involved in several rape incidents on the campus. The University was reluctant to take action, because the offenders had powerful political connections, and the resulting protest campaign led to a widespread discussion in the Bangladeshi media. In this article, I consider these events. I show how Bangladeshi social norms have brought about an effective and worsening "culture of exclusion" for female students and academic staff, and also discuss the attempts by staff (mainly female) and students to counter this situation and to claim the campus as a space in which women are able to take a full role.
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Dec 1, 1997
Womens Studies International Forum, Jul 1, 2006
Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2020
Contemporary Islam, Jun 29, 2011
One might suppose that a foundational element of proper Muslim behaviour is respect for one's par... more One might suppose that a foundational element of proper Muslim behaviour is respect for one's parents. However, it is not unusual in the contemporary Islamic world, both in Muslim-majority countries and in the diaspora, for young people to be much more 'Islamic' in behaviour, dress and lifestyle than their parents. As this may suggest, modernist Islamic piety is not infrequently directed by young people against their parents, as a mode of resistance to parental authority. However, wearing the hijab, becoming a follower of a Sufi shaykh, or marrying a 'good' Muslim spouse from another ethnic group to one's own, are different kinds of resistance from, for example, joining an inner-city youth gang, or rejecting one's parents' Asian cultural background for a more globalised identity. Dr Rozario will discuss some of the ways in which Islamic piety can be deployed in resistance to parental authority through case-studies from her ESRC-funded field research in Bangladesh and the UK, and consider in what ways these forms of behaviour resemble, and differ from, more familiar forms of resistance.
Womens Studies International Forum, Jul 1, 2006
Bangladeshi women are subjected to patriarchal norms that are legitimated by both the cultural an... more Bangladeshi women are subjected to patriarchal norms that are legitimated by both the cultural and the religious values of the country. In recent years these patriarchal norms have been challenged by women's increased physical mobility, a consequence of modernity and globalisation. There has however been a backlash against women's new roles. At the same time, a significant proportion of the newly mobile women, including university students, is adopting the burqa (veil), a practice associated with modern Islamist movements and previously almost non-existent in Bangladesh. This article discusses the implications of Islamist movements and their activities in the country for the rights of Bangladeshi women. The body of the article is concerned mainly with the impact of Islamist movements on women's daily lives, and includes an analysis of why some women have recently begun to adopt the burqa and a more Islamic identity.
Journal of Genetic Counseling, May 12, 2007
In this article, I analyse a narrative by Rohima 1 , a Bangladeshi woman now living in the UK who... more In this article, I analyse a narrative by Rohima 1 , a Bangladeshi woman now living in the UK who was diagnosed in adulthood as having NF1 (neurofibromatosis). While some themes in her narrative account resemble those of persons with NF1 in the general European and American population, other themes relate specifically to Bangladeshi cultural issues and practices. These particularly concern gender, sexual identity and marriage. As a young woman, Rohima's dark skin coloration and the tumors or lumps associated with her condition led her parents and relatives to regard her as unmarriageable and in effect, despite her evident intelligence and competence, to deny that she was a woman. Bangladeshi men and women alike found her appearance a bar to any social acceptability. Even after her marriage (to a non-Bangladeshi man), her family have been unwilling to accept her and her children fully into their kinship network. The article explores the consequences of genetic disorders such as NF1 in cultures where social identity and concepts of personhood, particularly for women, are inextricably related to appearance and to judgements regarding marriageability.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Feb 26, 1998
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 1, 2012
In order to make sense of how British Bangladeshis respond to and cope with genetic disorder and ... more In order to make sense of how British Bangladeshis respond to and cope with genetic disorder and associated medical illness, we need to understand Bangladeshi social, cultural, and religious life in its British context. In this interconnected global village, it is not only science, technologies, or commodities that travel across the many national boundaries, but also ideas, values, and religion. Thus to talk of one culture being clearly distinct from another culture is na·ive, to say the least (Clarke & Parsons 1997:1). The cultural and religious values that influence British Bangladeshis in relation to genetics are therefore fluid and complex. Minimally, one needs to bear in mind the transnational nature of British Bangladeshi families· and the strong familial ties they maintain with their relatives in Sylhet, where most of the Bangladeshi migrants come from. Through these ongoing ties, Bangladesh impacts directly on their own beliefs, values, and culture in general. The chapter provides an overview on the British Bangladeshis, followed by their ideas about illness including beliefs about spirit causation ( upri , bhut , nazar ). We then discuss the British Bangladeshis and the Islamic position on genetics, followed by the various misunderstandings and confUsion about genetics on the part of our interviewees.
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Jul 1, 1986
This book is a study of British Bangladeshi Muslim families and how they experience genetic disor... more This book is a study of British Bangladeshi Muslim families and how they experience genetic disorders. A major focus of the research is the ways in which Islam and British Bangladeshi culture affected the families’ behaviour.
The book provides a revealing perspective on the complexities of life in a diasporic community at a time of considerable tension and conflict. Two key issues are the continuity of Bangladeshi kin networks, restructured within their new transnational context but retaining entrenched attitudes to women, gender and hereditary illness, and the role of Islam and of Muslim identity in a British society increasingly hostile to Muslims and polarised around questions of religion. The families’ orientation towards genetic illness, and the ways in which they respond to it, cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of these issues. The families’ wider kin networks, both within and beyond the UK, have a critical impact on the options available to them. The extended family may provide support, but it can also stigmatise and allocate blame. Much depends on the kind of relationships women, the primary caregivers in all the families, have
with their close kin.
Islam also shapes the situation in complex ways. Islam strongly encourages medical treatment, but the families’ views of legitimate medical options are framed within the context of the growing ‘Islamophobia’ of wider British society, including moral panics about ‘cousin marriage’ among Muslims, and the increasing popularity among British Muslims of various forms of Islamic modernism. In practice, the politics of Muslim identity in contemporary British society often closes off possible options for genetic testing or other medical intervention.
This study also shows how the interaction of medical professionals and their genetic knowledge with ethnic minority populations may be complex and ambivalent. Affected families may have good reasons to make other choices than those expected and desired by medical professionals. The way in which medical professionals assess and understand the risks of genetic illness often differ from the way in which lay people see those risks. The decisions made by these families in relation to their children’s often severe genetic disorders may seem irrational and counterproductive within the framework of the medical profession. They are rational and comprehensible, however, within the framework of British Bangladeshi Muslims. For the families, the risk to reputation, status and honour, if others know that there is a fault or problem in the family’s ‘blood’ (rokter dosh, or fault with blood) might be more important than the risk of having an affected child. Rokter dosh also has moral implications for the members of the extended family, and can damage the marriage prospects of unmarried children, whether or not they are affected by genetic illness.
Genetic illness is a social issue as well as a medical issue, and the research in this book has real-life implications and significance as well as making a contribution to anthropological knowledge.