Madhurima Das

Bio: Madhurima Das is an academic researcher from Birla Institute of Technology and Science. The author has contributed to research in topics: Health promotion & Publicity. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 3 publications receiving 1 citations.

Postcolonial pandemic publics: examining social media health promotion in India during the COVID-19 crisis.

Abstract: Affordances offered by new media platforms are perceived as revolutionary instruments for removing the inequities of access to health promotion and communication. However, the production and dissemination of health promotional material on digital platforms does not necessarily translate into uniform access across diverse demographics. This article addresses the lacuna when it comes to analyzing Health Promotion initiatives in India, with a specific focus on the governmental publicity carried out on social media during the four phases of COVID-19 national lockdown between 24 March and 31 May 2020. Our intervention examines how governmental social media health promotion in India played a key role in shaping the 'outbreak narrative' during the lockdown across different levels of social and economic privilege. Through a combination of quantitative data analysis and qualitative interview methods, this article analyzes the circulation and impact of official publicity in online and offline spaces, during the COVID-19 lockdown in India. Resultant findings allow for a comprehensive assessment of whether such publicity contributed to democratized citizen science discourses: enabling social protection measures for vulnerable majorities or potentially reified the existing privileges of the economically and socially affluent minority. We find that health promotion campaigns during a pandemic must focus on reaching the widest possible audience in the most efficient manner. Specifically, in the Indian context, health promotion through mass-media like Television and Radio, and participatory media platforms needed to be implemented in tandem with new media platforms, to achieve required engagement with vulnerable communities on key health issues.

Mediating postcolonial pregnancies in neoliberal times

Abstract: “All we women need to be well organized and willful to fulfil both the roles successfully.”–Jimmy Kaul, CEO, Shopotox(“7 working, mother entrepreneurs share tips on work-life balance”, Jain 2017)Du...

Mommy Knows?: A Critical Study of “Mom-Schools” and Formal Education in Kolkata

Abstract: Globalization and its imminent effect on education have received attention in recent years. Less widely acknowledged is the discussion of the role of middle-class mothers who are stuck amidst the changes in their children’s education and future. With the aid of in-depth face-to-face interviews and extensive participant observation in Kolkata, this chapter examines how middle-class mothers resort to commercial solutions to help manage their crisis in a neoliberal India. The crisis managers in the form of “mom-schooling” agencies support and coach mothers to negotiate with the changing education system and parenting methods that have become highly Americanized. In this chapter, the author uses Bourdieu’s theory of conversion of capital to argue that mothers in Kolkata are acting as “converters” of capital with the help of commercial mom-schools by converting economic capital to a distinct form of cultural capital that they transfer to their children for the latter’s success in a global economy.

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued

Abstract: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued Ann Crittenden New York: Metropolitan Books 2001 323 pp ISBN: 0-8050-6618-7, $2500 (cloth) When I saw the book jacket endorsements from well-known authors like Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, I figured this book would be well-researched, pointed, and persuasive It is, although not without its limitations Ann Crittenden has crafted an eminently readable and informative review of the current social scientific research documenting the fact that, "raising children may be the most important job in the world, but you can't put it on a resume" The early chapters of the book deftly draw upon a who's-who list of social scientists regarded as leaders in the research of women's persistent wage inequality-Claudia Goldin, Barbara Bergmann, Paula England, Suzanne Bianchi, Jane Waldfogel, Felice Schwartz Refreshingly free of jargon and pretentious in-text citation lists, the book introduces these academics and not just their work Indeed, the text makes clear that Crittenden met with and is able to directly quote many of the researchers The book takes to task simplistic economic arguments, pointing out the inadequacies of earlier economic theorizing about why women and mothers are not financially rewarded by society (Chapter 4) The author pushes the issue of how mothers' household labor is kept out of the market although that same labor produces much of the human capital that their children will bring to the labor market as adults To explain why the "hand that rocks the cradle" has been rendered as a truly invisible hand, she turns attention to larger social processes and institutions such as marriage, law, and politics The middle part of the book focuses on wives' economic dependency on husbands, divorce law, and divorce settlement Each chapter relies mostly on one or two anecdotes or on individual legal cases and interviews of plaintiffs, supplemented by research statistics Chapters 10-- 12 take the government to task, decrying the lack of publicly funded childcare, the lack of social security payments for stay-at-home mothers, and the weak enforcement of child support law and settlements Crittenden concludes with a collection of familiar policy suggestions, including calls for businesses to pay for a year of paid parental leave for all workers, for the federal government to fund universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, for states to regard all family income as evenly divisible for husband and wife upon divorce, and for communities to change their attitudes and actions in ways that support people who decide to focus on parenting …

Living in dystopia: Fractured identities and COVID-19

Abstract: In literary terms, we seem to be inhabiting a post-apocalyptic dystopia. A virus has run rampant across the world. Millions have died. Breathing has become difficult. People often have to wear masks to venture outside. Social gatherings are tightly policed. Our movements are tracked by the state. Meanwhile on social media people share selfies that promote state edicts, and reveal that far from being individualistic, social media exhibit “the group character of online culture” (Wansbrough 2021, 43). But misinformation and antivaccination lies also continue to proliferate online. Poorer nations tend to suffer the most as social fractures have become more visible than ever, thus pointing to a continuing neglect of health infrastructure in the Global South. Travel between nations has become nearly impossible, as nation states increasingly adopt fortress mentalities. Reactionary mobs clash with police. What can literature tell us about how this might resonate within postcolonial and decolonial contexts? How might we understand COVID-19 textually? While linking the pandemic crisis to the precarious Global South, Wilson, Prakash Dwivedi, and GámezFernández (2020) point to the therapeutic role of literature, and the “interventions” it can offer in “the forms of healing, resilience, and resistance represented through literature and art, which can imagine new futures and utopian worlds” (442). Although the COVID-19 pandemic has been framed through apocalyptic cinema, television (Nulman 2021; O’Mahony, Merchant, and Order 2021), and literature (Kaminski 2021; Herrero and Royo-Grasa 2021), its significance to postcolonialism is still being considered. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact and relationship to postcolonialism has been examined from a number of angles. Kwok (2020), for example, notes the way that colonial prejudices come to the fore, with former President Donald Trump’s characterization of COVID-19 as the “China virus”. Kwok is also keen to accentuate the legacies of colonialism with respect to other pandemic responses, including how immigration is handled amid the crisis. Likewise, Dwivedi (2020) argues that “to see this pandemic through a racial lens alone would be naïve, as it obfuscates the larger issues that have unfolded from the present crisis” (n.p.). Other analyses have focused on healthcare in relation to social media (Roy, Das, and Deshbandhu 2021) in a postcolonial context, while still others have sought to accentuate the role of postcolonial histories in responses to COVID-19 (Anderson et al. 2021), and vaccine distribution. The very term “vaccine imperialism” helps designate the continued legacies of imperialism in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Performing pregnancy: Comic content, critique and ambivalence in pregnant stand-up comedy

Abstract: Stand-up comedy has recently become a primary site where representations of pregnancy are increasingly prevalent. Yet little academic work focuses on pregnant stand-up comedians and their performances. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this article examines the cultural work of pregnant stand-up comedy. Thematic analysis of pregnant stand-up comedy by Amy Schumer, Ellie Taylor and Ali Wong identifies three significant features characterising the performances: (1) Comedic Corporeality, Vulgarity and Ambiguity; (2) Breaking Silences through the ‘Unruly Expectant Mother’; and (3) Critiquing Maternity Inequality through Pregnant Stand-Up? We examine how pregnant stand-up comedy interacts with and disrupts dominant cultural pregnancy representations, illustrating how pregnancy functions simultaneously as comic content and critique in the performances. Such comic content and critique are characterised by complexity as ambivalence is central to pregnant stand-up comedy. We argue it is precisely such ambivalence that provides productive means to understand the cultural and theoretical significances of pregnant stand-up comedy.

Repurposing a WhatsApp group: How a fantasy cricket group transformed into a site of care and support during India's second wave of Covid-19

Abstract: Set in the context of India's second Covid-19 wave (April–June 2021), this article examines the transformation of a WhatsApp group originally created to study a pool of fantasy sport players into a site of care, concern, and support. By using netnography and in-depth interviews to chart the various challenges faced by the study's participants, the article analyzes how key health information was curated, moderated, and shared by the group's participants during the period. Our findings indicate that during the Covid-19 wave, users of WhatsApp relied on the personal connections it offered as they found ways to make the platform their own. By harnessing WhatsApp's capabilities with regard to accessing and sharing essential information that was both timely and locationally relevant, users of the service found ways to stay informed in moments that were fraught with uncertainty. By analyzing the various ways in which the group's participants shared information with each other and outside of the group, this study argues that the insights obtained can be used to understand broader social realities and the possibilities offered by platforms such as WhatsApp that could help navigate the various challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic in the Global South.

Exploring children’s TikTok cultures in India: Negotiating access, uses, and experiences under restrictive parental mediation

Abstract: TikTok is a popular platform allowing users to view and make short videos. The platform's embeddedness among youth cultures is key to TikTok’s commercial success, to attract and sustain a diverse array of international users. The discourse around children and social media especially TikTok is laced with technopanics, as is the case in India. Although sparse, literature shows children in India want to explore social media but parental mediation usually follows a restrictive style. Using a qualitative approach and multimodal methods, we unpack how children (10–18 years) in a large Indian metropolitan city use TikTok for self-presentation and creative expression while navigating restrictive parental mediation. This article helps gain in-depth understanding of children’s TikTok cultures in India by foregrounding their voices and contributes to larger scholarship on youth digital cultures by focusing on their: (a) vernacular cultures on TikTok, (b) deliberations on safety and wellbeing, and (c) negotiations regarding agency and resistance.