AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

4 SANJUKTA CHAUDHURI
litical unit of power dynamics and inequality which etched women’s discriminated
status and subordinate role in the public place e.g. labour
market (Okin,1997: 14-16). During the 1970s, Nancy Chodorow and
Dorothy Dinnerstien analyzed ‘family’ from a psychoanalytical viewpoint.
It was then that they developed the understanding of the differences
between boys and girls and related inequalities being entrenched in
the child-rearing arrangements, where the mother (woman) was seen as a
care taker, emotional vis-à-vis a father (man) working, bread winner
hence more rational. This inevitably impacts the psychological development
of children, where girls are able to associate to their same sex caretaker
in a more relational way while boys get more inclined ‘not to be
feminine’ and ally with more masculine traits. Thus, according to their
theory it was only gender equal child rearing that would help in resolving
misogyny and prevent such psychologies (ibid: 17).
It is in this historical, socio-political and cultural context that the
young generation is raised and resultantly the concept of ‘youth’ formulated
breeds ‘maleness’ in its conceptualization.
Taking lead from the above, whilst analyzing the conceptualization of
‘youth’ another facet that draws considerable attention is the process of
‘production of knowledge’. Questions like who is involved in the creation
of knowledge, the embedded power dynamics, construction of
meaning, its relation with ‘reality’ and the relevance of usage of language;
also, whether all of these have had a bearing on the interpretation of
meaning and creation of ‘truth’ in social sciences, becomes pertinent in
the context of this paper. Feminist studies reveal that men were considered
intellectually more capable and rational in the field of academics
compared to women’s lack of ‘reasoning’ and ability to think about basic
levels, bestowing men with privileged access as custodians to the ‘production
of knowledge’. So, it can be said that the ‘male-defined models
of knowledge’ when translated into theory was not perceived as maleoriented
as was well disguised under the accreditation of attaining value
of being ‘universal’ and ‘objective’ truth in the field of social sciences
(Gunew, 1990: 15). Brannen, McRobbie and Garber (in Phoenix, 1997:
2) further state that ‘in the study of young people, gender has only recently
begun to receive sustained attention […] that young women were
generally omitted from studies which claimed to be of youth, but were
really of young men. Thus, knowledge produced about young men was
treated as if it pertained to all young people’.