An Ethnographic Study of Organizing for Social Transformation for Women in Urban Poverty, Delhi, India

Negotiating Spaces of Everyday Politics is an ethnographic study of everyday lives and processes of social transformation among urban poor women in Delhi, India, as they seek to alter their life circumstances through taking up driving as a profession. With millions living under conditions of extreme poverty, rampant gender- and caste-based discrimination, and violence in familial, community and public spheres, the study addresses acute societal ills. Using the case of social enterprise Azad & Sakha and their Women on Wheels initiative, which seeks to address issues of poverty and injustice against women by helping them become professional drivers, the thesis’ central aim is to develop a contextualized theorizing of social transformation. This is accomplished by exploring lived experiences and practices of everyday relations through a spatial approach based on insights from human geography, such as the work of Massey (2005) and Simonsen (2007; 2008; 2010; 2013); gender studies, notably Butler (2015), as well as processual and performative perspectives within anthropology and entrepreneurship. The study focuses on the emergent features and ambiguities of social transformation, seeking to move beyond considerations of social entrepreneurship devoid of politics. As such, it contributes to the growing literature on entrepreneurship as social change that advocates a more critical perspective to social entrepreneurship, i.e., one that focuses on “the social.