Dr. Hempson’s research examines the socio-material and knowledge practices involved in the making of the modern Indian economy in the late colonial and early postcolonial periods. She is currently revising her dissertation, titled “The Social Life of Khadi: Gandhi’s Experiments with the Indian Economy 1915-1965," for publication. Denison University Khadi, or handspun, handwoven cloth, is perhaps the most well known of all Indian material artifacts, having served as the unofficial uniform of the Indian nationalist movement. However, it also played a vital economic role, for it lay at the center of Mohandas Gandhi's alternative vision of the Indian economy. This alternative vision called for a shift in the prevailing mode of economic development toward one that was more equitable and sustainable, concerned above all with the empowerment of individual artisans. In these and other respects, Gandhiji's vision of the economy diverged sharply from the one subscribed to by many of
KhadiVadi for education