Leela Dube

Leela Dube
Leela Dube – October 2006
Born	(1923-03-27)27 March 1923
Died	20 May 2012(2012-05-20) (aged 89) Delhi, India

Leela Dube (27 March 1923 – 20 May 2012) was a renowned anthropologist and feminist scholar, fondly called Leeladee by many. She had been married to the renowned anthropologist and sociologist LateShyama Charan Dube. Leela Dube was the younger sister of the late classical singer Sumati Mutatkar. Her elder son Late Mukul Dube was an avid photographer. She is survived by her younger son, Saurabh Dube. Known for her work on kinship and in women's studies, she wrote several books including Matriliny and Islam: religion and society in the Laccadives^[1] and Women and kinship: comparative perspectives on gender in South and South‑east Asia.

Career

Although she had taught earlier at Osmania, Dube's academic career really began in 1960 at

Due to the team effort of women's studies scholars (including Leela Dube), RC 32 was institutionalised in the World Sociological Congress. Dube invited many activists for the 12th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, 24–31 July 1988, to present papers on "Codification of Customary Laws into Family Laws in Asia". In the Congress, Dube's speech on feminist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock provided new insights into the departure of feminist anthropologists from the colonial legacy of "Big Brother watching you". Power relations between the North and The South in the construction of knowledge and the hegemonic presence of the ETIC approach in academics were questioned by Leacock as well as by Dube, a proponent of the "dialogical approach" in anthropological and ethnographic research.

At different times, Leela Dube was associated with the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the

In keeping with her expressed wish, her eyes were donated after her death.

Books and articles

Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development, co-edited by Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener and published by the Oxford University Press in 1986, provides an international perspective for the anthropology of women in the contexts of India, Iran, Malaysia, Brazil and Yugoslavia.

Her piece, "On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 23, No. 18 (30 Apr. 1988), has been used by women's groups for study circles and training programmes.

A volume in the series on Women and the Household, Structures and Strategies: Women, Work, and Family (1990), co-edited by Leela Dube and Rajni Palriwala, has been useful in teaching women's studies in economics, sociology, geography, social work and governance courses.

Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South and South-East Asia, by Leela Dube, United Nations University Press (1997), argues that kinship systems provide an important context in which gender relations are located in the personal and public arenas.

Her celebrated book, Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields, published in 2001 by Sage, is an important contribution in feminist anthropology in India. It examines gender, kinship and culture by sourcing a variety of unconventional materials such as folk tales, folk songs, proverbs, legends and myths to construct an ethnographic profile of feminist thought. She provides an understanding of the socialization of the girl child in the patriarchal family, with the "seed and soil" theory propagated by Hindu scriptures and epics symbolizing a domination-subordination power relationship between men and women.^[5][6][7]

Her last publication, a Marathi translation of her last book in English, was Manavashastratil Lingbhavachi Shodhamohim, which appeared in 2009.

Awards

In 2009 she was given the UGC's Swami Pranavananda Saraswati Award for 2005.^{[citation needed]}

In 2007 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Sociological Society.^{[citation needed]}

References