ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes representations of hijras/kinnars/arvanis in India as they have been invoked in HIV/AIDS, development, and trans/national academic discourse. Hijras are interchangeably considered “Third Gender”, “Third Sex,” or in the language of their most widely known ethnographer, Serena Nanda, “Neither men nor women.” Hijras are also varyingly seen as eunuchs, transsexuals, effeminate men, and, increasingly, as transgenders. The Kaaya photo project was funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). Highlighting the language of sustainability, GTZ’s mission is directed toward international cooperation, “viable, forward-looking solutions for political, economic, ecological and social development in a globalised world.” Seeing development as a discourse through which subjects, assumptions, strategies, and central concepts are rendered as objects of knowledge has been useful. Non-normative sexualities have been noticeably absent in development discourse until recently in stark contrast to the preoccupations with population and reproductive health, for example. Putative subjects of development are assumed as normatively gendered and sexual.
