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This paper presents a gender-based and symbolic interactionist understanding of how self-presentation and credibility were crucial aspects of how some activists, health care advocates and service providers negotiated HIV/AIDS knowledge and policy in New York City and Calcutta in the 1990's. Using communication as a unit of analysis and paying particular attention to the social structure of, and affiliations within, the knowledge producing webs amongst these groups of people, the author examines how immigrants and sex workers in these two cities strategically presented and interpreted gender and credibility to mobilize for better access to services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class mobility research has been scarce in India and moreover no previous research has analysed the mobility experience of women. In this paper we analyse patterns of marital mobility of women in India and compare those patterns to men's mobility through own employment. We specifically study the role caste plays in marital mobility. Using the 2004 National Election Study data with over 28,000 respondents, we find that rather than there being more mobility for women through marriage than for men through employment as observed in the West, in India the situation is reversed. The 'direct inheritance' effect seen to work for men from service class, petty business and agricultural families in the West seems to hold for Indian women though not through the traditional channel of inheriting father's occupation, but by marrying into a class similar to the father's. In terms of caste we see this effect to be the strongest for the higher castes that are able to maintain their privileges more for their daughters than for their sons. The possible reason for the departure of the Indian case from Western research might be due to the continued practice of arranged marriages; this possibility is discussed in detail. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]