Working against Labor
Struggles for Self in the Indian Construction Industry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2262736 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Sargent (0000-0003-0302-5492, University of Chicago) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 76-85 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropology of Work Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0883-024X • E-ISSN: 1548-1417 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/awr.12199 |
| OpenAlex | W3097573620 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 27 |
From the outside, India's urban construction sites appear to be places of toil, yet for workers, the material qualities of particular actions, from carrying bricks to cutting marble, are experienced as either self-affirming work or abject labor. This article explores how construction workers understand and intervene in the meaning of their work. Skilled and semi-skilled workers are particularly attentive to the bodily shifts brought on by work, as well as the varied recognition of such shifts by others. The formulation of a superior's command, along with callouses, capacities, and the aches induced by work are all understood as elements of an unstable process of transformation. Workers are constantly on guard to ensure that their work, envisioned as a specific bodily capacity, does not devolve into labor or undifferentiated toil. By refusing to perform tasks that they consider labor, these workers simultaneously assert control over the conditions of their productive activity and recreate an embodied form of class distinction. I argue that such refusals and contestations constitute a politics of work that poses particular limitations but also possibilities for envisioning the nature of capitalist work more generally
Working Skin
Metabolic Living
Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty
White Saris and Sweet Mangoes
Toward an Ethnosociology of South Asian Caste Systems
Fluid Signs
Living Class in Urban India
The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout
On Interobjectivity
Commercial radio
Supply Chains and the Human Condition
The Nature of Things
Materiality, Form, and Context
Contract Labour in Urban Constructions
A body set between hot and cold
The Problem with Work
Sex, Bricks and Mortar
Entrapped Entrepreneurship
Advocacy after Bhopal
Permeable and Partible Persons
Attuning to the Chemosphere
Condition-Suspension
Moral Economies of Remuneration
Resisting labour control and optimizing social ties
The Politics of Pits and the Materiality of Mine Labor
The Stickiness of Sex Work
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |