This book explores gender, sexualities, labour, migration and coloniality in Africa and India in an attempt towards transnational understanding and ways of rethinking gender. It scrutinises the nuances, textures, taxonomies and architectures of gender and sexuality in the mediated encounters between the two regions.
Amidst the current climate of great global fragmentation and geopolitical conflict, this volume brings new readings from Africa and India to surface points of contact and departure. As a counter to ruptures and alienation that often characterise geopolitical borders, this book advances new epistemologies from both the internal and external borders of the modern (and colonial) world-system. In fresh and incisive essays, the volume offers ideas to build solidarity and collaboration through the lens of ‘contact zones’ that open up prospects for transcultural dialogues across continents, contexts, regions, nations, identities and disciplines. The volume contributes to transnational understanding, highlights complex diversity and resists the idea of a single, unified set of experiences of gender and sexuality in non-Western contexts. Rather than representing mainstream trends, it advances the idea of interracial solidarity that is linked to the revolutionary momentum of confronting imperialism as a consciousness that reifies oppressive domains of thinking.
The book will be of interest to scholars of gender and sexuality, anthropology, cultural theory, sociology, human geography, development studies, cultural and media studies, film studies, linguistics, curriculum studies, political science, land and migration studies. It will also be of interest to activists working in these domains.
Edited by:
Ahonaa Roy (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay India),
Vasu Reddy
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781041080152
ISBN 10: 1041080158
Pages: 218
Publication Date: 11 December 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Notes on the Contributors. Acknowledgements. Introduction. PART 1: Epistemic Decolonization and Intersubjective Inquiry 1. Mapping Gender onto Language: Identity Construction and its Symbolic Significance in the Trans-Koti-Hijra Community of India 2. The Struggle Against Tradition: An Inspection of Rafiki and Cobalt Blue, Africa 3. Emerging voices of queer ambassadors’ student group in promoting LGBTQ inclusive curriculum at a rural university in Eastern Cape province, South Africa 4. The influence of the Political Economy, 4th Industrial Revolution and Globalization on the North-South Binary 5. The Country, the City, and Postcolonial Queer and Trans Theory: Land, Migration, and Rural Imaginaries"" PART 2: Rethinking Marginality: Sex, Embodiment, Discursive Participation 6. Borders vs. bodies: Experiences of transgender Migrants in South Africa 7. Respectably Gay: Race, Caste and Class Wars in India and South Africa 8. Towards Liberation: Queer South Asian Diasporic Conversations on Transnationalisms, Activisms, and Solidarities 9. ‘Libidinal Nationalism’: Perverse Sex, Corporeal Investment, Sign-Value in India and Brazil 10. Queering the Kunda - Sex, Food and the South African Indian 11. Postscript. Index.
Ahonaa Roy is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Social Anthropology and Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has been part of several projects with the United Nations, USAID, and the Government of India. Her recent publications include, Gender, Sexuality Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective and Cosmopolitan Sexuality: Gender, Embodiments, Biopolitics in India. Vasu Reddy is a Professor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation at the University of the Free State (UFS) and Research Associate in Sociology at the University of Pretoria. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa (ASSAf) and a B1 NRF-rated scientist. A recent publication is Research and Activism: Ruth First and Activist Research (2025).
Reviews for Transnational Contact Zones: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Africa and India
‘Combining interdisciplinary and deterritorialised methods, contributors to this volume open up new ways of thinking about sexuality and gender through multiple forms of hierarchies such as race, class and caste. The volume is a unique contribution to the re-fashioning of knowledge production through discussions that yoke the politics of intimacies with that of sociality.’ —Sanjay Srivastava, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, UK
