Suchergebnisse

Radhika Singha, The Coolie's Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict (1914–1921). Noida: HarperCollins Publishers, 2020, 396 pp.

The ubiquity of building construction in contemporary Mumbai is transforming everyday urban life and landscape. This article examines one facet of the building construction industry: its organization of labor through distinctions of skill. Distinctions among skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled labor shape the everyday work of building, yet these terms only partially map onto hierarchies of embodied capacities and know-how. At least two vectors are producing what I term a "problem-space" concerning skill. On one hand, long-standing patterns of informal learning by doing and solving problems at hand are now being challenged by a new industry emphasis on formal training as the basis for skill. On the other hand, builders do not necessarily seek to change their heavy reliance on labor categorized as unskilled, at times viewing technology as an ultimate solution to what they see as the limitation of the majority of workers. Workers, for their part, while largely eschewing a language of skill, nonetheless valorize a variety of forms of embodied knowledge and ability, including those involved in exiting the strenuous work of building to become a contractor of construction labor.

Historically, the abolition of slavery marked the signal moment that established a legal distinction between people and property: people could not be property. If slavery had been based on the potential equivalence or interchangeability of people and property, its abolition asserted an absolute legal and moral difference between them. Yet, these dichotomous ways of thinking about persons and things emerged alongside and in tension with a third way of thinking that they now obscured, in which property and personhood were closely linked—in which property tied people to communities, to particular histories, and to personal status; property was what was 'proper' to the person. While the trade in and ownership of persons has been broadly condemned, this connectedness of property and personhood has remained crucial to modern notions of the individual, privacy, and subjectivity. Indeed, the story of the emergence of the modern legal subject is often told as the progressive, if inevitably incomplete, process of publicly superceding this linkage of property and personal status, and limiting it to a demarcated private sphere. Such formulations construe the family as a domain where persons and things will necessarily continue to be linked, where relationships will inevitably blur affective, moral, and material claims, and where relationships of status will continue to prevail.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART I DEVELOPMENT -- Introduction -- 1 BUNTY SINGH BUILDER OF DREAMS -- 2 IMRAN HOUSING CONTRACTOR -- 3 DALPAT MANAGER OF SERVICES -- 4 MEHMOODBHAI TOILET OPERATOR -- 5 KAUSHAL LAND AGGLOMERATOR -- 6 JANU SISTER-SUPERVISOR OF MIGRANT CONSTRUCTION WORKERS -- PART II PROPERTY -- Introduction -- 7 DR. K MIDDLE-CLASS SOCIAL WORKER -- 8 ASHOK RAVAT SHIVAJI PARK'S SENTINEL -- 9 SHAZIA PROOF MAKER -- 10 NIRMALA KAMATHIPURA'S GATEKEEPER -- 11 FARHAD "SUE MAKER" -- PART III BUSINESS -- Introduction -- 12 RAMITA SURROGACY AGENT -- 13 MUHAMMAD REVALORIZER OF E-WASTE -- 14 DEEPAK MAKING MUMBAI (IN CHINA) -- 15 LUBAINA FRAMING "DEVELOPMENT" -- 16 SHANKAR DELIVERING AUTHENTICITY -- 17 MANAL-MUNA COOKING UP VALUE -- 18 RAMJI BUSINESS ENERGIZER -- PART IV DIFFERENCE -- Introduction -- 19 BHIMSEN GAIKWAD SINGER OF JUSTICE -- 20 SULTAN IMAGE MANAGER -- 21 RAJ CARTING COSMOPOLITANISM -- 22 LAXMI DEALER IN EMOTION -- 23 DHARAMSEY ASSEMBLER OF TRADITION -- 24 DALVI SPEAKER OF CITIES -- PART V PUBLICS -- Introduction -- 25 SHASHI DOT CONNECTOR -- 26 ANIL PRAKASH AMPLIFIER OF CINEMA-INDUSTRIAL CONNECTIONS -- 27 GAURAVPANT MISHRA CROWD MAKER -- 28 SRINIVASAN KINGMAKER -- 29 MADHU DOOR OPENER -- 30 POORNIMA DESIGNING RELATIONS -- PART VI TRUTH -- Introduction -- 31 RAJANI PANDIT DETECTOR OF "TRUTHS" -- 32 AFZAL TAXIMAN RUMOR NAVIGATOR -- 33 PAWAN PRISON MASTER -- 34 SUJIT MASTER COMMUNICATOR -- 35 CHADDA REPORT MAKER -- 36 PRAKASH DATA ENTREPRENEUR -- CONCLUSION OTHER PLACES, OTHER TIMES -- GLOSSARY -- ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX