Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Sixteen - Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Interrogating Indian labour's political subjectivity through the lens of postcolonial Marxism during COVID times, this chapter draws on evidence from the ‘cyber-field’ to explore the fraught processes through which labour may ‘become’ working class. Reflecting on Marx's various writings on the formation of collective political subjects, the chapter traces the uniqueness of the Indian case and the ways in which such uniqueness has abruptly surfaced during the disruptions generated by the COVID-19 lockdown, which has suddenly displaced the lives of millions of migrant workers, forcing them on the move to reach their rural homes. The analysis also reflects on the merits and limitations of studying social processes from afar, using the cyberspace as a novel archive and fieldwork terrain.
Introduction: The Field and the Archive in COVID Times
On 25 March 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared on national television at 8 p.m. and declared a complete and indefinite national lockdown in effect from midnight. This resulted in an immediate closure of factories, workshops, shops and all other sites of work, and also all vehicular, rail and air transport. Hardest hit were millions of labourers who migrate seasonally or for longer periods from some of India's most ‘economically backward’ regions to centres of high growth. From the announcement of the lockdown to now, images and voices of, and information on, migrant labourers have received extensive coverage in media and social media. While this is too immediate an event, and the experience, one could say, is too ‘raw’, this moment of rupture from the ordinary presents an opportunity to reflect both on ‘field-based research’ and on certain elements of Marx's writings as they relate to the collective political subjectivity of ‘labour’ becoming ‘working class’.
In ‘normal’, that is, pre-COVID times, questions on migrant labour, their relation to capital, to the state, to unions, their conditions of work, their contract, their social and everyday life, their relation to new technology, their migration itself and so on would have been investigated via ethnography and time spent in ‘the field’: However, ‘locked down’ indefinitely, the ‘field’ is not accessible to us for fieldwork or ethnography.
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 219 - 230Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021