In this chapter, I trace different sectors and spaces of labour. Although I primarily frame class in Marxist terms, I also introduce more performative and practice-based interpretations. The narrative leads into the post-liberalisation context but this cannot be fully understood without considering pre-colonial class relations, colonial transformations and post-independence protectionist policies. This historization enables a deeper understanding of the ambivalences surrounding structural adjustment and liberalisation which opened up the economy, rolled back protections and divested from public sector enterprises. As indicated by other commentators on neoliberalism, outcomes were heterogeneous and did not represent wholesale abandonment of prior economic models. I begin this sectoral analysis by considering continuity and change in India’s agrarian economy that enables the introduction of key themes including change and continuity, the awkwardness of the class hierarchy, the interlocking of identity and labour, debt and labour bondage, mobility of labour and capital, and symbolic constructions of class.
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Chambers, Thomas
School of Law and Social Sciences
Year of publication: [in press]Date of RADAR deposit: 2024-06-03