To Know the Field: Shaping the Slum Environment and Cultivating the Self

摘要: A broad array of public policy and anthropological research has demonstrated how the slum environment physically symbolically excludes its residents from society. Yet recent social shifts in urban South Asia suggest that is a way people living slums also transform their identity. I use conceptual frame dialectical environment-self creation to women particular as tool for personal redefinition. Women commented on techniques see value poor environmental conditions, endure harsh weather, create microenvironments could result physical changes body. To extent they produce these changes, it reflected spiritual capacities “knowers” field, able identify potential an inadequate through endurance moral fortitude. This contributes our understanding significance self. draw attention ways even limited change can have resounding effects definition communicating worth.