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- Convenors:
-
Andrew Sanchez
(University of Cambridge)
Christian Strümpell (Humboldt University Berlin)
- Discussant:
-
Jonathan Parry
(London School of Economics)
- Location:
- C405
- Start time:
- 26 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel interrogates the class concept in historical and ethnographic analyses of India, and asks whether collective action and the formal/ informal sector divide are useful frames of analysis.
Long Abstract:
Current scholarship calls into question the conceptual opposition of stably employed Fordist working classes to the 'working poor'. These models posit that different types of working populations rely upon distinct forms of collective action: the work-based 'traditional unionism' of the formal sector, distinct from the 'community unionism' of the informal sector. This panel engages with the historically contingent emergence of working classes through collective action, and interrogates the spatial and political boundaries that are produced or contested by such struggles. Papers in this panel investigate these issues with reference to recent original ethnographic and/or historical research on South Asia.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Andrew Sanchez (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic field work in the company towns of Jamshedpur and Rourkela, this paper explores how class interacts with other identities in historically contingent ways. The paper interrogates the conceptual utility of class consciousness and class solidarity for the study of labour in India.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic field work in the industrial company towns of Jamshedpur and Rourkela, this paper explores how class interacts with other identities in historically contingent ways. The paper interrogates the conceptual utility of class consciousness and class solidarity for the study of labour in India.
In the private sector Tata company town of Jamshedpur, class was 'made' during the late colonial period from a diverse collection of labour migrants, and membership of the Tata working class today remains confined to their descendants. In the public sector Rourkela Steel Plant, a working class was 'made' in the early postcolonial period from both 'locals' and immigrants. However, access to the Rourkela working class is today only possible for those that claim a 'local' ethnic heritage.
In Rourkela it is effectively only 'sons of the soil' who can enter the working class, while in Jamshedpur, it is 'sons of steel'. Both of these cases represent closed workforces that are constructed with reference to a loosely defined autochthony. This paper argues that class has not emerged in ways that out-reach and outdistance kinship and ethnicity in the industrial towns of Eastern India.
Luisa Steur (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at the political-economic context of the rise of adivasi identity politics in Wayanad (Kerala), demonstrating it as the filpside of the demise of modern class formation.
Paper long abstract:
The late 90s and early 2000s in Wayanad (Kerala) saw an increasing number of land occupations led by landless agricultural workers framed in terms of the restoration of adivasi land rights. This paper looks at the political-economic context of this rise of "identity politics" to draw attention to the processes of dispossession - particularly of meaningful social entitlements as well as of stable employment relations - that accompanied it, demonstrating some of the ways in which neoliberal reform has affected class relations in Kerala. It focuses on the complex process of how after only relatively recently - in the late 60s - having become "free" laborers, many Paniya agricultural workers in Wayanad found themselves facing the threat of being reduced to a constantly migrating, locally expedient population. I argue that the rise of a social movement centered on "adivasi" belonging is hence not the spontaneous eruption of primordial grievances or desires but, in this context, the flipside of the demise of modern class formation.
Nandini Gooptu (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Through a study of urban private security guards, this paper discusses new forms of urban informality and work culture in post-liberalisation India, and addresses analytical issues germane to our understanding of emerging labour regimes and workers’ perceptions of class and social relations.
Paper long abstract:
Through a study of urban private security guards, this paper discusses new forms of urban informality and work culture in post-liberalisation India, and addresses analytical issues germane to our understanding of emerging labour regimes and workers' perceptions of class and social relations. Private security services have emerged as one of the fastest growing generators of employment, responding to a heightened need for protection and surveillance, with which the state's law and order machinery is unable to cope. Moreover, India's consumer revolution and recent urbanisation have been marked by a phenomenal expansion of the interactive service sector and of privately owned or managed spaces for public purpose. The maintenance of safety and security of the owners and users of such 'mass private spaces' has led to an immense surge in private security services. A new cadre of low-paid, casual, contract labour has emerged, who work under a regime of organised informality, with recruitment, placement and training being increasingly systematically institutionalised and formalised by private employment agencies, with the imprimatur of the state. The paper also explores aspects of embodied work and emotional labour that characterise the interactive service sector. Workers' body and emotions are now key to workplace performance, that demands direct social interaction with customers and clients. This paper argues that workers' perceptions of class difference and identity are now increasingly shaped at the workplace through cultural and social exchange between workers and consumers of services, and are not determined by employment relations, nor politically constructed through collective action.