Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T13:19:10.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on India's Working Classes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2014

ANDREW SANCHEZ  and
CHRISTIAN STRÜMPELL
ANDREW SANCHEZ
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle, Germany Email: [email protected]
CHRISTIAN STRÜMPELL
Affiliation:
South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With reference to original ethnographic and historical research on India, the papers collected in this forum suggest conceptual refinements that might re-centre the study of class in regional scholarship. Through discussions of class politics in industrial, construction and agricultural contexts, the authors interrogate the conceptual oppositions between stably employed fordist labour forces and the ‘working poor’ that have often constrained ethnographic and historical analyses of India's working classes. Inspired by Marxist historiography, this forum engages with the historically contingent emergence of Indian working classes through different types of labour, gender and ethnic struggles, and considers the complex political boundaries that are produced by such processes.

Type
FORUM: Class Matters: New Ethnographic Perspectives on the Politics of Indian Labour
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 5 , September 2014 , pp. 1233 - 1241
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Brosius, C. (2009). ‘The gated romance of ‘India shining’: visualising urban lifestyle in images of residential housing development’, in: Gokulsing, M. and Dissanayake, W. (eds), Popular Culture in a Globalised India: A Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 174–191Google Scholar; Waldrop, A. (2004). Gating and class relations: the case of a New Delhi colony, City and Society 16 (2): 93–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Brosius, C. (2010). India's Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity, Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar; Donner, H. (ed.). 2011. Being middle class in India. A way of life, Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar; Fernandes, L. (2006). India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, University of Minnesota Press, MinneapolisGoogle Scholar; Gupta, D. (2000). Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds, HarperCollins, New DelhiGoogle Scholar; Lukose, R. (2009). Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India, Duke University Press, Durham, North CarolinaCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rajagopal, A. (2001). ‘Thinking about the new Indian middle classes: gender, advertising and politics in an age of globalisation’. In: Rajan, R. (ed.) Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India, Kali for Women, New Delhi, pp. 57–100Google Scholar; Sridharan, E. (2004). The growth and sectoral composition of India's middle class: its impact on the politics of economic liberalization, India Review 3 (4): 405–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thapan, M. (2004). Embodiment and identity in contemporary society: femina and the new Indian middle-class woman, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 30 (3): 411–444CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Aiyer, A. (2007). The allure of the transnational: notes on some aspects of the political economy of water in India, Cultural Anthropology 22 (4): 640–658CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Banerjee, A. (2009). Peasant classes under neoliberalism: a class analysis of two states, Economic and Political Weekly 44 (15): 49–57Google Scholar; Bijoy, C. R. and Ravi Raman, K. (2003). Muthanga: the real story—Adivasi movement to recover land, Economic and Political Weekly 38 (20): 1975–1982Google Scholar; Deshpande, R. S. (2002). Suicide by farmers in Karnataka: agrarian distress and possible alleviatory steps, Economic and Political Weekly 37 (26): 2601–2610Google Scholar; Ghosh, K. (2006). Between global flows and local dams: indigenousness, locality and the transitional sphere in Jharkhand India, Cultural Anthropology 21: 501–534CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halliburton, M. (1998). Suicide: a paradox of development in Kerala, Economic and Political Weekly 33 (36–37): 2341–2345Google Scholar; Mishra, S. (2006). Farmers’ suicides in Maharashtra, Economic and Political Weekly 41 (16):1538–1545Google Scholar; Mohanakumar, S. and Sharma, R. K. (2006). Analysis of farmer suicides in Kerala, Economic and Political Weekly 41 (16): 1553–1558Google Scholar; Mohanty, B. B. (2005). ‘We are like the living dead’: farmer suicides in Maharashtra, Western India, Journal of Peasant Studies 32 (2): 243–276CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ravi Raman, K. (2005). Corporate violence, legal nuances and political ecology: the cola war in Plachimada, Economic and Political Weekly 40 (25): 2481–2483Google Scholar; Stone, G. D. (2007). Agricultural deskilling and the spread of genetically modified cotton in Warangal, Current Anthropology 48 (1): 67–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Evans, G. (2006). Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evans, G. (2012). ‘The aboriginal people of England’: The culture of class politics in contemporary Britain, Focaal, Volume 2012, Number 62, pp. 17–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wacquant, L. J. D. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Polity, Cambridge; Malden, MassachusettsGoogle Scholar,.

5 Carrier, J. (2012). The Trouble with Class, European Journal of Sociology, 53: 263–284CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Gregory, C. (1997). Savage Money. The Anthropology and Politics of Commodity Exchange, Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, pp. 1–40Google Scholar.

7 Chibber, V. (2006). On the Decline of Class Analysis in South Asian Studies, Critical Asian Studies 38 (4): 357–387CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Bloch, M. (1975). ‘Property and the end of affinity’, in Bloch, M. (ed.), Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, Malaby, London, pp. 203–228Google Scholar; Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (1991). Of Revelation and Revolution Vol I: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (1997). Of Revelation and Revolution Vol II: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gill, L. (1994). Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia, Columbia University Press, New YorkGoogle Scholar; Harris, O. (1995). ‘Ethnic Identity and Market Relations: Indians and Mestizos in the Andes’ in Larson, B. and Harris, O. (eds), Ethnicity, Markets and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology, Duke, Durham North Carolina, pp. 351–390Google Scholar; James, C. L. R. (1980). The Black Jacobins, Allison and Busby, LondonGoogle Scholar; Meillassoux, C. (1981). Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Economy, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar; Nash, J. (1979). We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat US, Colombia University Press, New YorkGoogle Scholar; Rodney, W. (1969). Groundings With My Brothers, Bogle-L'Ouverture, LondonGoogle Scholar; Scheper-Hughes, N. (1993). Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, University of California Press, BerkeleyGoogle Scholar; Seddon, D. (1978). Relations of Production: Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology, Frank Cass, LondonGoogle Scholar; Stephen, L. (2002). Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico, University of California Press, BerkeleyCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taussig, M. (1980). The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, University of North Caroline Press, Chapel HillGoogle Scholar.

9 Andre Beteille's classic essays on class and Jan Breman's work on agrarian relations stand out in Indian sociology of this period. See Beteille, A. (1979). Homo Hierarchicus, Homo Equalis, Modern Asian Studies 13 (4): 529–548CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breman, J. (1974). Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India, University of California Press, BerkeleyGoogle Scholar.

10 Arnold, D. (1980). Industrial Violence in Colonial India, Comparative studies in Society and History, 22, 2, pp. 234–255CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chakrabarty, D. (1981). Communal Riots and Labour: Bengal's Jute Mill-Hands in the 1890s, Past and Present, 91: 140–169CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chakrabarty, D. (1983). On Deifying and Defying Authority: Managers and Workers in the Jute Mills of Bengal circa 1890–1940, Past and Present, 100: 124–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chakrabarty, D. (1989). Rethinking Working-class history: Bengal 1890–1940, Princeton, Princeton New JerseyGoogle Scholar; Ramaswamy, E. A. (1983). The Indian Management Dilemma: Economic vs Political Unions, Asian Survey, 23, 8, 976–990CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramaswamy, E. A. (1988). Worker Consciousness and Trade Union Response, Oxford, New DelhiGoogle Scholar.

11 See Chandavarkar, R. (1997). ‘The Making of the Working Class’: E. P. Thompson and Indian History, History Workshop Journal 43: 177–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Notable exceptions during this period include Holmström's monograph on South Indian industrial labour, John Harriss’ analysis of the relationship between the urban labour aristocracy and working poor, and Jan Breman's study of rural labour migration in Gujarat. See: Breman, J. (1985). Of peasants, migrants, and paupers: rural labour circulation and capitalist production in west India, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar; Holmström, M. (1984). Industry and Inequality. The social anthropology of Indian labour, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harriss, J. (1986). The Working Poor and the Labour Aristocracy in a South Indian City: A Descriptive and Analytical Account, Modern Asian Studies, 20, 2, 231–283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Thompson, E. P. (1966 [1963]). The Making of the English Working Class, Vintage Books, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

13 See Guha, R. (1982). On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India. In Guha, R. (ed.), Subaltern Studies I,Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp. 1–8Google Scholar.

14 Thompson, E. P. (1978). Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class? Social History 3 (2): 133–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Sanchez and Strümpell, this Issue.

15 See Arnold, Industrial Violence in Colonial India; Chakrabarty, Communal Riots and Labour, On Deifying and Defying Authority; Guha, R. (1999 [1983]). Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Duke University Press, Durham North Carolina, p. 76Google Scholar.

16 Guha, On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India, p. 6.

17 Arnold, Industrial Violence in Colonial India; Chakrabarty, Communal Riots and Labour.

18 Chakrabarty, On Deifying and Defying Authority.

19 Chandavarkar, ‘The Making of the Working Class’.

20 Ibid: p. 179. And See Chandavarkar, R. (1994). The origins of industrial capitalism in India. Business strategies and the working classes in Bombay, 1900–1940, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Chibber, On the Decline of Class Analysis in South Asian Studies; Sarkar, S. (2000 [1994]). ‘Orientalism Revisited: Saidian Frameworks in the Writings of Modern Indian History’, in Chaturvedi, V. (ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, Verso Books, London; New York, pp. 239–255Google Scholar.

22 Cf. Sen, S. (1999). Women and Labour in Late Colonial India. The Bengal Jute Industry, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar; Joshi, C. (2003). Lost Worlds. Indian Labour and its Forgotten Histories, Permanent Black, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

23 Chandavarkar, ‘The Making of the Working Class’, p. 191.

24 Corbridge, S. and Harriss, J. (2000). Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy, Polity Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar; Harriss-White, B. (2003). India Working: Essays on Society and Economy, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

25 Sanyal, K. (2007). Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive Accumulation, Governmentality and Post-colonial Capitalism, Routledge, New DelhiGoogle Scholar, Chatterjee, P. (2004). The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Political Society in Most of the World, Columbia University Press, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

26 Gooptu, N. (2001). The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New YorkCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joshi, Lost Worlds. Indian Labour and its Forgotten Histories.

27 Breman, J. (1996). Footloose labour: working in India's informal economy, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breman, J. (2004). The making and unmaking of an industrial working class: sliding down the labour hierarchy in Ahmedabad, India, Oxford University Press, New DelhiGoogle Scholar; Chari, S. (2004). Fraternal Capital: Peasant Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in Provincial India, Stanford, Stanford CaliforniaGoogle Scholar; Cross, J. (2010). Neoliberalism as unexceptional: economic zones and the everyday precariousness of working life in south India, Critique of Anthropology 30 (4): 355–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Neve, G. (2005). The Everyday Politics of Labour. Working Lives in India's Informal Economy, Social Science Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar; Fernandes, L. (1997). Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills. University of Pennsylvania Press, PhiladelphiaGoogle Scholar; Harriss-White, B. (2003). India Working: Essays on Society and Economy, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar; Heuze, G. (1996). Workers of another world: Miners, the countryside and coalfields in Dhanbad, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar; Nadeem, S. (2011). Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing is Changing the Way Indians Understand Themselves, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New JerseyCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nisbett, N. (2009). Growing up in the Knowledge Society: Living the IT Dream in Bangalore, Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar; Parry, J. P. (2013). ‘The Embourgeoisement of a Proletarian Vanguard?’ in Jodhka, S. (ed.), Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

28 Cf. Sanchez, A. (2012). Deadwood and Paternalism: Rationalising Casual Labour in an Indian Company Town’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18: 808–827CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Questioning Success: Dispossession and the Criminal Entrepreneur in Urban India, Critique of Anthropology 32.4: 435–457.

29 Carbonella, A. and Kasmir, S. (2008). Dispossession and the anthropology of labor, Critique of Anthropology 28 (1): 5–25Google Scholar; Freeman, C. (1998). Femininity and flexible labor: fashioning class through gender on the global assembly line, Critique of Anthropology 18 (3): 245–263CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Genda, Y. (2005). A Nagging Sense of Job Insecurity: The New Reality Facing Japanese Youth, International House of Japan, TokyoGoogle Scholar; Harvey, D. (1987). Flexible accumulation through urbanization: reflections on ‘post-modernism’ in the American city, Antipode 19 (3): 260–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar; Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar; Kasmir, S. (1999). The Mondragon model as post-Fordist discourse: considerations on the production of post-Fordism, Critique of Anthropology 19 (4): 379–401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kosugi, R. (2008). Escape from Work: Freelancing Youth and the Challenge to Corporate Japan, trans. Mouer, R., Trans Pacific Press, MelbourneGoogle Scholar; Mathur, C. (1998). Transformation as usual? The meanings of a changing labour process for Indiana aluminium workers, Critique of Anthropology 18 (3): 263–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, A. (1999). The empire of direct sales and the making of Thai entrepreneurs, Critique of Anthropology 19 (4): 401–423CrossRefGoogle Scholar.