Paromita Sanyal

Graduate Student in Sociology

Biographical Note

Paromita Sanyal is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. Her primary research interest lies in bringing a sociological understanding to processes of social and economic development. She is particularly interested in the interrelationships between gender and development and the intersections of culture and economic development. She is also interested in the organizational aspects of development, i.e., in the work and strategies of nonprofit development organizations.

In her most recent project, Sanyal examines how microfinance programs influence women's agency or autonomy in developing nations. Microfinance programs, which are targeted at poor women of developing nations, have come to be globally recognized as a poverty-alleviation strategy. They have also gained popularity because of their much touted effect in empowering women by providing them direct access to credit. In this project she examines the latter claim. She distinguishes between the agency benefits women derive from their access to credit versus their access to expanded social networks and participation in group meetings and training sessions. Based on interviews with over 400 hindu and muslim women participating in microfinance programs in rural India, she finds that women's agency is benefited far more from the previously ignored associational aspect of group life than from its financial aspect. Her study reveals that this much neglected aspect has more potential of bringing significant social changes as compared to the financial aspect of these programs.

In a previous project, Sanyal contributed to the literature on organizational growth by studying the strategies and dilemmas of a nonprofit development organization.In this project she theoretically drew from the sociology of organizations and social movement organizations literatures and arrived at findings that apply to both nonprofit development organizations and social movement organizations.

Sanyal is deeply committed to rigorous qualitative work. In addition to her substantive projects, she has drawn on her recent fieldwork experience to write a paper on the use of qualitative methods in organizations and the competing interests of researchers and organization leaders.

Sanyal is fully fluent in Bengali and Hindi and will continue to expand her research program on the social aspects of economic development in India and Bangladesh. Her next project will look to understand how people in the global South are adjusting to the open market in the post-liberalized economy by undertaking a multi-city study of attitudes towards economic liberalization and inequality in India.

Her non-academic interests include fiction writing. Some of her works have been published in the Dudley Review, a literary magazine published at Harvard.

10/23/2007

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Culture and Economic Development; Social Capital and Civil Society; Sociology of Development; Gender and Development; Non-Profit Organizations; Economic Sociology; Qualitative Methods; South Asia

Previous Degrees

Harvard University, A.M. Sociology, 2004; Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India), M.A. Sociology, 1999; Presidency College (Calcutta, India), B.A. Sociology, 1997

Qualifying Paper Title

"'Scaling Up' by Reaching Down- growth dilemmas of an intermediary nongovernmental organization"

Committee

Professors Peter V. Marsden, Kenneth Andrews, L. David Brown

Prospectus Title

"Impact of Credit Group Participation on Women’s Agency and Social Capital"

Committee

Prefessors Martin K. Whyte, Mary C. Brinton,and Peggy Levitt,

Miscellaneous Additional Information

Optional Sections on General Exams

Sociology of Gender and Occupations

Oral Exam Topic

Sociology of Gender and Development

Software Skills

Atlas.Ti, QSR Nudist

Grants Received

Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University

Contact

617-496-5794 (FAX)

641 William James Hall
33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138