Ranjana Raghunathan
National University of Singapore, South Asian Studies Programme, Department Member
- Ranjana Raghunathan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies, at Vidyashilp Univers... moreRanjana Raghunathan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies, at Vidyashilp University in Bangalore, India. Prior to this role, she has worked as an adjunct lecturer and tutor for undergraduate students at the South Asian Studies Programme in the National University of Singapore, where she also received her PhD. Her research interests are in the anthropology of kinship, religion, urban studies and gender. Prior to her academic avatar, Ranjana was a researcher-practitioner in the social welfare space for more than a decade, with a master’s in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has worked on gender equality, migrant workers’ rights in Singapore, and homelessness in Mumbai. She has served as Vice-President at AWARE, a leading feminist organization of Singapore, and has managed research projects at other NGOs and think-tanks. edit
Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (FASS
Book review
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Through the proposed frame of ‘everyday intimacies’, this article explores the entanglements of race and gender in inter-ethnic relationships. ‘Everyday intimacies’ brings together the minority experiences of everyday racism, the state... more
Through the proposed frame of ‘everyday intimacies’, this article explores the entanglements of race and gender in inter-ethnic relationships. ‘Everyday intimacies’ brings together the minority experiences of everyday racism, the state practices and policies of multiculturalism, and their inflections in intimate relationships of marriage, friendship, and dating. This approach demonstrates not just how the state regulates people’s intimate life through policies of marriage and family, but also how other indirect processes of multicultural governance mediate intimate life. Drawing on biographical narratives of mainly Indian women from in-depth life story interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the article brings the literature on intimacies in conversation with the scholarship on race and ethnic relations in Singapore. Through a focus on intimacy, the article illustrates how tacit knowledge and embodied effects of everyday racism relate to larger trends of intermarriages, rising singlehood among Indian women and possibilities of co-ethnic friendships and solidarities. In doing so, the article presents novel insight into race and gender relations in Singapore.
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This article traces the gendered entanglements of migration, intimate relations and law among itinerant Indians in colonial Singapore between 1900 and 1940, when Indians began consolidating their roots. Singapore did not legislate... more
This article traces the gendered entanglements of migration, intimate relations and law among itinerant Indians in colonial Singapore between 1900 and 1940, when Indians began consolidating their roots. Singapore did not legislate marriages for migrants, but the courts had to rule on the validity of migrant marriages in marital disputes and offences, resulting in legal ambiguities. Through a close reading of legal reports, newspaper archives and oral histories focusing on cases of wife enticement, this article formulates a gendered understanding of the migration process and intimate life for Indians. It builds on the scholarly literature on intimate life and legal governance in colonial societies, makes a set of analytical descriptions that reveal tensions of race, class and gender in legal negotiations and underscores how the processes of migration and law impacted on the social life of Indians. The cases discussed illuminate how intimate relationships, especially of Indian women, animated communal and patriarchal anxieties, and they establish the role of Indians in the legal history of marriage and family laws in Singapore. Moreover, the context of an urban free port with a predominantly itinerant population highlights mechanisms of colonial rule that were different from the exigencies in other colonies.
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Interview with Amrit Gangar, a Mumbai-based independent writer, film theorist, curator and historian.
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Looking at the depictions of the Brahmin, the fakir and the rajah in the silent films of early 20th century cine-magician Georges Méliès, Ranjana Raghunathan finds anxiety, ambiguity and complexity buried beneath Oriental tropes.
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Chapter 3 of the book Hinduism in Singapore and the Hindu Endowments Board, edited by Lavanya Balachandran and Sylvia Koh
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Preface: The Untold Histories of Singapore’s Indian Women In What we inherit: Growing up Indian, edited by Shailey Hingorani and Varsha Sivaram. (AWARE Singapore, Ethos Books), pp 25-40
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Exhibition Catalog of Rati Chakravyuh, Aicon Gallery, New York, 2014
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A chapter in the two-volume publication about 200 years of Tamil history in Singapore.
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This book chapter is an ethnography of homelessness in Mumbai, and centres the process of fieldwork. Through the gendered experiences of women living on the streets, the chapter analyses what home and homelessness mean, how the state... more
This book chapter is an ethnography of homelessness in Mumbai, and centres the process of fieldwork. Through the gendered experiences of women living on the streets, the chapter analyses what home and homelessness mean, how the state authorities and laws inflect their experiences, and the ways that globalisation and urban poverty impact women's lives in particular ways.
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As part of a research series on unmet social needs of vulnerable communities in Singapore, the Lien Centre for Social Innovation (LCSI) conducted a study on people with physical disabilities. This study explores the challenges that this... more
As part of a research series on unmet social needs of vulnerable communities in Singapore, the Lien Centre for Social Innovation (LCSI) conducted a study on people with physical disabilities. This study explores the challenges that this community faces in various stages and spheres of life, and includes interviews with 100 respondents. The qualitative interviews sought to gain greater understanding of caregiving and caregivers, education, employment and finances. Where possible, we also investigated ways that these various components intersect with one another, as well as areas where the needs of people with disabilities intersect with challenges facing other vulnerable communities in Singapore, such as single-parent families, the elderly and foreign domestic workers.