Thomas Chambers
Biographic Data
| ID | 234015 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Chambers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Chambers |
| SIGNATURE | CHAMBERS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oxford Brookes University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7383-9574 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Mai kya hūņ? (what am I?): Masculinities, paid domestic labour and care work in Delhi and Gurgaon, India
This article introduces and conceptualises ‘protective care’ – a masculinised and commodified form of caregiving – involving male domestic workers (MDWs) in India. Drawing on ethnographic research, it describes how MDWs negotiate gendered authority within feminized and stigmatised labour. Challenging portrayals of MDWs as passive or silenced, the article highlights constrained agency and efforts to assert masculine respectability. By linking empi…
Lean on me: Sifarish, mediation & the digitisation of state bureaucracies in India
Through an ethnographic focus on Muslim neighbourhoods in a North Indian city, this article traces the effects of increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision in India by examining the implications for relations between the state, low-level political actors and local populaces. The article explores the practice of sifarish (leaning on someone to get something done) which, it is argued, cannot be seen within simpli…
Book Forum on Labor Skills and Migration in India
Middle-Class Transnational Migration and Its Margins in The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program
Gendering the everyday state: Muslim women, claim-making & brokerage in India
This ethnographic article focuses on interactions between poor Muslim women, various intermediaries/brokers, and the Indian state. The article illustrates the complexities of claim-making and the forms of subjugation/marginalisation Muslim women experience when attempting to access resources, documents or paperwork. Contrary, however, to many representations of Muslim women's engagements with the state, we also draw out agentive aspects as women …
Comfort’ & ‘Discomfort’: A Brechtian Intervention in Teaching Space & Practice
This paper disrupts notions of ‘comfort’ as always being a desirable product when attending to spatial contexts and teaching practice. The paper draws on a long theatrical tradition stemming from the work of Bertolt Brecht which, amongst other things, seeks to stimulate critical thought not by making the audience comfortable but by creating a sense of ‘discomfort’ through alienation and other techniques. I bring this together with work on ‘critic…
From Fieldsite to ‘Fieldsite: Ethnographic Methods in the Time of Covid
Performed Conviviality: Space, bordering, and silence in the city
Through ethnographic material gathered in the Muslim woodworkingmohallas(neighbourhoods) of a North Indian city, this article attends to 'performed' elements of everyday convivial interactions. It builds on work that situates conviviality as a normative project aimed at understanding and fostering interaction within urban space which bridges forms of difference. Through descriptive accounts, the article illustrates how convivial exchanges can emb…
Ghar Mein Kām Hai (There is Work in the House): When Female Factory Workers become ‘Coopted Domestic Labour’
This article examines the utilization of female Muslim factory workers, in a North Indian woodworking industry, as domestic labour in the homes of their employers. The ethnography illustrates the importance of considering hidden forms of domestic-sector employment where workers are coopted into domestic tasks. The illumination of ‘coopted domestic labour’ has implications for understanding the breadth and scope of the sector and contributes to de…
Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour: Ethnographic Studies from Globalizing India
Our introduction to this Special Issue draws out themes from all four articles which focus on India’s domestic-care economy: women’s paid domestic labour, care work and surrogacy. Through fine-grained ethnographic detail, all the articles nuance questions around agency and resistance, and actively challenge the ‘passive victim’ stereotype that continues to be the primary imaginary in many representations of domestic-care workers. We describe how …
Waiting for the state: Gender, citizenship and everyday encounters with bureaucracy in India
This article focuses on practices and meanings of time and waiting experienced by poor, low-class Dalits and Muslims in their routine encounters with the state in India. Drawing on ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, it presents experiences of waiting around queuing and applying for paperwork, cards, and welfare schemes, in order to examine the role of temporal processes in the production of citizenship and citizen agency. An…
Continuity in Mind: Imagination and migration in India and the Gulf
In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India, and the Gulf, this article explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of labour migrants, the article argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding not just patterns o…
Waiting for the state: Gender, citizenship and everyday encounters with bureaucracy in India
This article focuses on practices and meanings of time and waiting experienced by poor, low-class Dalits and Muslims in their routine encounters with the state in India. Drawing on ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, it presents experiences of waiting around queuing and applying for paperwork, cards, and welfare schemes, in order to examine the role of temporal processes in the production of citizenship and citizen agency. An…
Continuity in Mind: Imagination and migration in India and the Gulf
In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India, and the Gulf, this article explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of labour migrants, the article argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding not just patterns o…
Performed Conviviality: Space, bordering, and silence in the city
Through ethnographic material gathered in the Muslim woodworkingmohallas(neighbourhoods) of a North Indian city, this article attends to 'performed' elements of everyday convivial interactions. It builds on work that situates conviviality as a normative project aimed at understanding and fostering interaction within urban space which bridges forms of difference. Through descriptive accounts, the article illustrates how convivial exchanges can emb…
Gendering the everyday state: Muslim women, claim-making & brokerage in India
This ethnographic article focuses on interactions between poor Muslim women, various intermediaries/brokers, and the Indian state. The article illustrates the complexities of claim-making and the forms of subjugation/marginalisation Muslim women experience when attempting to access resources, documents or paperwork. Contrary, however, to many representations of Muslim women's engagements with the state, we also draw out agentive aspects as women …
Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour: Ethnographic Studies from Globalizing India
Our introduction to this Special Issue draws out themes from all four articles which focus on India’s domestic-care economy: women’s paid domestic labour, care work and surrogacy. Through fine-grained ethnographic detail, all the articles nuance questions around agency and resistance, and actively challenge the ‘passive victim’ stereotype that continues to be the primary imaginary in many representations of domestic-care workers. We describe how …
Lean on me: Sifarish, mediation & the digitisation of state bureaucracies in India
Through an ethnographic focus on Muslim neighbourhoods in a North Indian city, this article traces the effects of increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision in India by examining the implications for relations between the state, low-level political actors and local populaces. The article explores the practice of sifarish (leaning on someone to get something done) which, it is argued, cannot be seen within simpli…
Ghar Mein Kām Hai (There is Work in the House): When Female Factory Workers become ‘Coopted Domestic Labour’
This article examines the utilization of female Muslim factory workers, in a North Indian woodworking industry, as domestic labour in the homes of their employers. The ethnography illustrates the importance of considering hidden forms of domestic-sector employment where workers are coopted into domestic tasks. The illumination of ‘coopted domestic labour’ has implications for understanding the breadth and scope of the sector and contributes to de…
From Fieldsite to ‘Fieldsite: Ethnographic Methods in the Time of Covid
Comfort’ & ‘Discomfort’: A Brechtian Intervention in Teaching Space & Practice
This paper disrupts notions of ‘comfort’ as always being a desirable product when attending to spatial contexts and teaching practice. The paper draws on a long theatrical tradition stemming from the work of Bertolt Brecht which, amongst other things, seeks to stimulate critical thought not by making the audience comfortable but by creating a sense of ‘discomfort’ through alienation and other techniques. I bring this together with work on ‘critic…
Ghar Mein Kām Hai (There is Work in the House): When Female Factory Workers become ‘Coopted Domestic Labour’
This article examines the utilization of female Muslim factory workers, in a North Indian woodworking industry, as domestic labour in the homes of their employers. The ethnography illustrates the importance of considering hidden forms of domestic-sector employment where workers are coopted into domestic tasks. The illumination of ‘coopted domestic labour’ has implications for understanding the breadth and scope of the sector and contributes to de…
Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour: Ethnographic Studies from Globalizing India
Our introduction to this Special Issue draws out themes from all four articles which focus on India’s domestic-care economy: women’s paid domestic labour, care work and surrogacy. Through fine-grained ethnographic detail, all the articles nuance questions around agency and resistance, and actively challenge the ‘passive victim’ stereotype that continues to be the primary imaginary in many representations of domestic-care workers. We describe how …
Waiting for the state: Gender, citizenship and everyday encounters with bureaucracy in India
This article focuses on practices and meanings of time and waiting experienced by poor, low-class Dalits and Muslims in their routine encounters with the state in India. Drawing on ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, it presents experiences of waiting around queuing and applying for paperwork, cards, and welfare schemes, in order to examine the role of temporal processes in the production of citizenship and citizen agency. An…
Continuity in Mind: Imagination and migration in India and the Gulf
In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India, and the Gulf, this article explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of labour migrants, the article argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding not just patterns o…
Performed Conviviality: Space, bordering, and silence in the city
Through ethnographic material gathered in the Muslim woodworkingmohallas(neighbourhoods) of a North Indian city, this article attends to 'performed' elements of everyday convivial interactions. It builds on work that situates conviviality as a normative project aimed at understanding and fostering interaction within urban space which bridges forms of difference. Through descriptive accounts, the article illustrates how convivial exchanges can emb…
Comfort’ & ‘Discomfort’: A Brechtian Intervention in Teaching Space & Practice
This paper disrupts notions of ‘comfort’ as always being a desirable product when attending to spatial contexts and teaching practice. The paper draws on a long theatrical tradition stemming from the work of Bertolt Brecht which, amongst other things, seeks to stimulate critical thought not by making the audience comfortable but by creating a sense of ‘discomfort’ through alienation and other techniques. I bring this together with work on ‘critic…
From Fieldsite to ‘Fieldsite: Ethnographic Methods in the Time of Covid
Gendering the everyday state: Muslim women, claim-making & brokerage in India
This ethnographic article focuses on interactions between poor Muslim women, various intermediaries/brokers, and the Indian state. The article illustrates the complexities of claim-making and the forms of subjugation/marginalisation Muslim women experience when attempting to access resources, documents or paperwork. Contrary, however, to many representations of Muslim women's engagements with the state, we also draw out agentive aspects as women …
Book Forum on Labor Skills and Migration in India
Middle-Class Transnational Migration and Its Margins in The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program
Lean on me: Sifarish, mediation & the digitisation of state bureaucracies in India
Through an ethnographic focus on Muslim neighbourhoods in a North Indian city, this article traces the effects of increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision in India by examining the implications for relations between the state, low-level political actors and local populaces. The article explores the practice of sifarish (leaning on someone to get something done) which, it is argued, cannot be seen within simpli…
Mai kya hūņ? (what am I?): Masculinities, paid domestic labour and care work in Delhi and Gurgaon, India
This article introduces and conceptualises ‘protective care’ – a masculinised and commodified form of caregiving – involving male domestic workers (MDWs) in India. Drawing on ethnographic research, it describes how MDWs negotiate gendered authority within feminized and stigmatised labour. Challenging portrayals of MDWs as passive or silenced, the article highlights constrained agency and efforts to assert masculine respectability. By linking empi…
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Ethnography (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (5 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)