Overview
- 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
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Table of contents(7 chapters)
About this book
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.
Reviews
“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)
“Smita Yadav tells the compelling story of a Gond people in India who were displaced from their revered forests and forced to migrate for survival. Enduring a precarious livelihood, the community has built a dignified autonomy. Relying on family and household, they combine farming, local (often illegal) mining of stones and diamonds as well as other nonfarm work for pay and survival, while remaining independent of the state and maintaining their freedom. Yet mining restrictions and the increasing closure of the forests place ever-greater pressure on them, while government programmes reaching them are thin. The price they pay is high, for the Gond suffer a variety of illnesses, alcoholism, excessive gambling, and domestic violence. Placing her study in historical, social and political contexts, Yadav shows how Gond resilience and dignity, despite the many pressures, are built piecemeal in the interstices of the larger economy and society.” (Stephen Gudeman, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
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University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom
Smita Yadav
About the author
Smita Yadav is an anthropologist interested in statelessness/state, anarchy, labour, precarity, universal basic income, gender, migration, religion, secularism, poverty, indigenous knowledge, South Asia, environment, and politics of development. She has over ten years experience working as a consultant and academic on these topics in India, US, and UK. She is currently preparing a project on religion, secularism, state and development in India. She teaches Human Geography at the University of Brighton and is a Postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sussex where she completed her PhD in Anthropology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Precarious Labour and Informal Economy
Book Subtitle: Work, Anarchy, and Society in an Indian Village
Authors: Smita Yadav
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77971-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-77970-6Published: 29 June 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08588-9Published: 26 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-77971-3Published: 13 June 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXV, 253
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Ethnography, Social Structure, Social Inequality, Area Studies, Social Anthropology, Entrepreneurship, Labor Economics