Thinker. Researcher. Teacher.
Tannistha Samanta
I am an Associate Professor with the Department of Sociology, FLAME University, Pune, India. My most active line of research is in the field of social gerontology where I have examined questions related to health, living arrangements, social capital, intergenerational relationships and older adult sexualities. In another line of inquiry, I have examined sexual and reproductive health of women through the intersecting lens of body and the market.
I currently serve as the co-editor of Anthropology & Aging (the official journal of the Association for Anthropology, Gerontology, and the Life Course). I am also an editorial board member for the Sociological Review (SAGE)
Prior to joining FLAME, I was a faculty member with the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar.
Email: tannistha.samanta@flame.edu.in
Publications
(Featured works below)
A complete list of publications can be found:
Google Scholar
academia.edu
researchgate.net
2017 (Springer, Nature)
This volume intends to re-establish social gerontology as a discipline that has pragmatic links to policy and practice. Collectively, the chapters enrich public debates about the moral, cultural and economic questions surrounding aging, thereby ameliorating the “problems” associated with aging societies. This volume is uniquely cross-cultural, theory-driven and cross-disciplinary. It fills a gap in the gerontological scholarship of the global south that is predominantly descriptive and empirical.
Aging in e-place, Journal of Women & Aging, 32(1)
24 October, 2019
I offer a reconfiguration of the term “aging in place” by analyzing media content of web-based senior-focused portals while demonstrating how these online consumer-driven spaces unwittingly re-create new social relations and imagined communities.
Women’s Empowerment as Self-Compassion: Empirical Evidence from India. PLOS One., 15(5)
May 13, 2020
Although ICPD brought about an international consensus on the centrality of women’s empowerment and gender equity as desired national goals, the conceptualization and measurement of empowerment in demography and economics have been largely understood in a relational and in a family welfare context where women’s altruistic behaviour within the household is tied either to developmental or child health outcomes. The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to offer an empirical examination of the household level empowerment measure through the theoretical construct of self-compassion and investigate its association with antenatal health, and (2) to ensure robust psychometric quality for this new measure.
Going Solo in Midlife: Can the pandemic destigmatize living alone in India? (Journal of Aging Studies, Elsevier)
Nov 25, 2020
In this piece, I argue that the pandemic with its emphasis on social distancing as a desirable civic norm can reconfigure popular understanding of mature female singlehood in India- a condition that is often described in the language of lacks and social failures.
Hymen, Interrupted: Negotiating body, markets, and consumerist modernity in India (Indian Journal of Medical Ethics)
Jan 4, 2021
In this commentary, I contend that in a context marked by a slow but steady rise in sexual liberalism around the ideals of female sexuality and desire, the pressure to remain virginal is manifested through a potent nexus of markets and moral economies associated with gender and intimacy
Aging, housing markets and social inclusion: Insights from India (Journal of Aging Studies, Elsevier)
June 2021
In this piece, I draw attention to how the booming real estate market in India is patterned around the axes of social inequality. Specifically, it argues that in a socio-economic context of depressed later life incomes with declining familial support, a singular focus on (upper) middle class niche senior living market is both exclusionary and misguided.
This thing called love (The Gerontologist, OUP)
Sept 2021
Using similar themes from the noted Korean documentary, My Love, Don’t Cross the River (2013: director Jin Moyoung), Netflix’s docuseries My Love: Six Stories of True Love (2021) follows six couples in long-term companionship across six countries (the United States, Spain, Japan, Korea, Brazil, and India) with narratives that interweave memory, nostalgia, mortality, and conjugal friendship
Courses and Mentoring
I have taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and have conducted several sessions on academic writing. Currently, I have two doctoral students who are working with me. I am open to working with postdoctoral scholars who share similar research interests.
Workshops
I have offered sessions/workshops in:
Academic Writing in the Social Sciences
Mixed Methods Design in the social sciences
Sexual Cultures: Youth, Body & the Market (IITGN, May 11 2019)
Summer Institute on Global Health & Development (IITGN, Summer 2015)
Media/Op-ed
Fertile Fashion, The Film Companion (Aug 17, 2021)
Bombay Begums: Desiring Neoliberalism, South Asia Journal (April 6, 2021)
Leisure as resistance (with Ashwin Tripathi), scroll.in (Jan 31, 2021)
Invited Guest speaker, “Thinking Allowed”, BBC Radio 4 Podcast: “Trust in the time of a pandemic” (June 22, 2020)
Curating Memories, Intergenerationally, The LiveWire (Sept 1, 2020)
Middle-classness, delivered: Sociological reflections on fast food during the pandemic(with Shreya Sen) (August 18, 2020).
Of grandparents, memories and the pandemic. somatosphere.net (April 28, 2020)
A beginner’s guide to the importance of social capital during a pandemic The Wire (March 30, 2020)
Covid-19: In sickness and in wealth Forbes India (March 20, 2020)
Gully Boy’s Azadi comes from a digital revolution among urban poor, The Quint (March 13, 2019)
Sex & respectability utopia in Priyanka Chopra’s Bumble Ad, The Quint, (Feb 2, 2019)
Bollywood’s re-imagination of growing old. Kafila (July 16, 2018)
Padman, Patriarchy and the Poor Man’s Innovation. Kafila (Feb 28, 2018) (with Gundi, Mukta)
Culture, aging and social capital, International Network for Critical Gerontology, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada (April 28, 2017)
Get in Touch
School of Liberal Education, FLAME University, Lavale, Pune 412115