Transnational Contact Zones: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Africa and India

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.

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).