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         article-type="Research Paper"
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  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Politics, Culture and Society</journal-title>
        <abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">PCS</abbrev-journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="ppub">3108-0545</issn>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>Dr. Omair Anas</publisher-name>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.68243/jpcs.2026.v1.i1.000007</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">PCS110007</article-id>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Plural Market Publics: Digital Platforms and Women’s Economic Participation in Jaipur’s Handicraft Sector</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <name>
            <surname>Mehta</surname>
            <given-names>Divya</given-names>
          </name>
          <contrib-id contrib-id-type="orcid" authenticated="true">https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8948-1145</contrib-id>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1"/>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <aff id="aff1">Centre for Studies of Plural Societies (CSPS), New Delhi</aff>
      <pub-date pub-type="epub" iso-8601-date="2026-02-14">
        <month>02</month>
        <day>14</day>
        <year>2026</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>1</volume>
      <issue>1</issue>
      <fpage>47</fpage>
      <lpage>70</lpage>
      <abstract>
        <p>In India’s handicraft sector, women have long been central to production yet excluded
from visible market spaces and denied public authority within them. This paper asks what happens
when selling moves online in the context of gendered spheres of craft production and entrepreneurship. Drawing on interviews with ten women entrepreneurs in Jaipur and observation of bazaars and
digital selling practices, it examines how digital platforms enable middle-class women to enter new
markets, build customer relationships, and establish legitimacy in ways the physical bazaar rarely
allowed. The study finds not one market but several coexisting market publics: bazaars, exhibitions,
and platform-based communities, each with its own rules of participation and recognition. This plurality is theorized as a plural public sphere. Women’s digital selling constitutes alternative market
publics: arenas built through circulation, conversation and trust rather than shopfronts, and organized around values of craft, care and community as much as profit.
Platforms do more than widen access: they alter the structure of participation. They reduce reliance
on male intermediaries, create direct channels to customers, and allow women to appear, on their
own terms, as market actors. Yet these opportunities remain uneven, reaching a resourceful section
of the middle class: visibility must be maintained, authenticity performed, and unpredictable algorithms, platform dependence and rising labor demands managed. Digital platforms, the paper concludes, do not dissolve gendered market hierarchies but reorganize them, opening real yet conditional ground on which women negotiate recognition as legitimate economic actors. The paper thus
contributes to discussions of gender, digital platforms, and economic inclusion.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group kwd-group-type="author">
        <kwd>women entrepreneurs</kwd>
        <kwd>digital platforms</kwd>
        <kwd>plural public sphere</kwd>
        <kwd>counter publics</kwd>
        <kwd>handicraft sector in India</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
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