Precarious Labour and Informal Economy
Work, Anarchy, and Society in an Indian Village
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Beschreibung
An empirical account of one of India’s largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds—who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region’s forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds’ unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.
An empirical account of one of India’s largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds—who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region’s forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds’ unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.
Contributes to an understanding of the economy and society in the global south due to increasing informality and precarious forms of work Provide a rich ethnography of social institutions of trust, family, and other informal social relations Based on a detailed 12 month ethnography of the Gonds of Central India
Autor*in
Smita Yadav
Themen in »Precarious Labour and Informal Economy«
informal economy Gonds India Majoori Majdoors rural industries self-employment unskilled wage workers labour ontologies poverty ethnography sustenance self reliance area studies
Stimmen zu »Precarious Labour and Informal Economy«
“This well-researched and detailed book will have value for those interested in the changing lives of forest-dependent peoples in Central India and offers particularly insightful comments on education and welfare … .” (Adam Runacres, LSE Review of Books, July 10, 2019)
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“Keenly attentive to mining and other forms of wage labor, varied mythic and colonial pasts, intra-community and intra-household differences, inter-generational shifts in desire, and livelihood survival strategies, Smita Yadav takes us on a journey into the lives of the Sur Gonds in this meticulously researched ethnography. Through a variety of concrete examples we enter a range of possibilities and suffocations: a school inspector’s surprise check within which actual educational dysfunction is fated to remain opaque, a botched rural Employment guarantee program, a college graduate who finds himself in a cycle of unskilled daily wage work, new rituals of upward mobility, and forms of social composition that show why Maoist political mobilization does not emerge here. Yadav offers her readers a portrait that remains true to life, an ‘anarchist’ rendering of dignity, autonomy and freedom in the context of majboori (scarcity/necessity).” (Bhrigupati Singh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brown University, USA)
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