Running on Hope: Female Community Health Labor in Rajasthan, India (Policy to Practice) - Softcover

Closser, Svea; Shekhawat, Surendra Singh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826507638 ISBN 13: 9780826507631

Verlag: Vanderbilt University Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Throughout India, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) visit households in their communities to deliver essential health services and link community members with key health benefits. Like many other female Community Health Workers across the world, ASHAs are often portrayed as virtuous, passive volunteers, selflessly providing services to their neighbors.

The reality is more complicated and much more interesting. Drawing on ethnographic work in Rajasthan, Running on Hope follows ASHAs through striking personal transformations. From their positions as rural daughters‑in‑law—a particularly low‑power position in Rajasthan—ASHAs have, over years of work, gained unprecedented autonomy for young rural women. They have also gained a deep understanding of what many argue is the exploitation involved in their low‑ranking position in the health system. ASHAs often earn less than $100 per month for extensive work, well below the legal minimum wage.

To counter this, many ASHAs have joined unions—an endeavor that has ultimately proven disappointing: union leaders’ desires for political advancement are often at odds with ASHAs’ own needs. However, ASHAs do not have connections, money, or social power to organize effectively on their own, without a political patron. In Running on Hope, authors Svea Closser and Surendra Singh Shekhawat interview women who work as ASHAs to learn about their organizing goals, their roles in their community as conduits to health education and resources, and their hopes for a better future.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Svea Closser is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Vanderbilt University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826507638
• ISBN 13: 9780826507631
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 161
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar