Rutgers University Press Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India

Review "Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India is a welcome addition to the still-sparse but growing cross-cultural collection of ethnographies addressing deafness and sign languages ... Although primarily analyzing the lives and agency of deaf Indians, this book has much broader significance and is relevant for anyone exploring local responses to regional and global phenomena involving nongovernmental organizations, governmental agencies, religious organizations, multinational corporations, and multilevel marketing businesses."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly""Adept at signing herself, Michele Friedner is able to move between the worlds of deaf and hearing subjects, giving the work an ethnographic depth that might not be possible to achieve otherwise ... This is a pioneering work and will, I am sure, soon become part of the disability studies syllabus in many Indian universities."-- "Indian Sociology""From home to the world, this book takes a nuanced view of classic questions of social stigma and value, while it also reorients the discourse on development in contemporary India."-- "American Anthropologist""In Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India Friedner has crafted an ethnographic monograph that is at once a compelling narrative with vivid descriptions, and a carefully researched and powerfully structured theoretical assertion of how deaf identities are multiple, global, and valuable."-- "Somatosphere""Michele Friedner's groundbreaking ethnography takes us on a rich, grounded journey with deaf young adults in Bangalore and shows us how they make their way through schools, vocational training, and religious worlds. From the opening scene to the last page, Friedner invites our appreciation of 'deaf gain' and how community, conviviality, kinship, value, and possibility are created."--Faye Ginsburg "professor of anthropology, New York University"