Servants' movements into and out of middle-and upper-class homes in the South Indian city of Madurai create a mixing of outside and inside spaces. Employers feel that this mixing threatens the security of their homes and class standing. Yet, because the presence of servants is a necessary marker of class, employers attempt to contain the threat by buttressing the symbolic boundaries of the household, controlling domestic workers' movements through space, and manipulating workers' closeness to and distance from employers. These employers' accounts and actions reveal central concepts of and anxieties about class in contemporary urban India, [class, space, domestic service, women, domesticity]Employing domestic workers can feel like a mixed blessing to middle-and upper-class Indian women. Domestic workers help these women support their families' class standing by maintaining clean and ordered homes and by enabling them to pursue other status-producing activities or their own employment. The presence of servants also serves in and of itself as a crucial sign of class achievement. On the other hand, servants' entrances into employers' homes mark the introduction of a dangerous outside into an orderly and protected inside. Employers feel that servants threaten their families and, in particular, their class status. The movement of servants from their own homes into and between employers' homes actually has a number of effects-including the distribution of information, labor, and material and cultural capital, as well as the creation of social networks across classes and neighborhoods. Many of these effects are viewed neutrally or positively by both employers and social analysts. Yet, when I spoke with employers in the South Indian city of Madurai, their most consistent and compelling comments on servants' movements dealt with the dangers posed to their households by servants' entrances and exits.Employers feel they must vigilantly protect their families and homes against the dangers that could destroy the order they have so carefully produced as a sign of their own class standing. Servants represent the dirt, disease, and "rubbish" (Chakrabarty 1991) of a disorderly outside world that employers commonly associate with the lower class and that pointedly contrast with the ideal cleanliness, order, and hygiene of their own homes. Slippage in the other direction, toward the outside, is also a great risk; symbolic and material capital must be prevented from escaping the house through gossip and theft. Employers' accounts project an image of a household whose perimeters need to be carefully and constantly buttressed against the disorderly mixing of categories (cf. Douglas 1966) that servants' entrances and exits entail. The household and its members communicate an image to spectators-from neighbors to American Ethnologist 27{2):462-469. Copyright C 2000, American Anthropological Association. permeable homes 463 coworkers, from fellow guests at weddings to the community at large-who interpret the symbolic markers of class prod...

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Recent economic changes in India have coincided with a dramatic change in the concept of a 'middle class' in the south Indian city of Madurai. Whereas previous sets of class identities were overwhelmingly dichotomous (for example, the rich and the poor, or the 'big people' and 'those who have nothing'), the middle class has now become a highly elaborated component of local class structures and identities. It is also a contested category; moreover, its indigenous boundaries differ from those most often used by scholars, marketers, or policy-makers. Drawing from research over the past decade, this paper examines local definitions of 'middleness' and the moralized meanings ascribed to it. Whilst being 'in the middle' is a source of pride and pleasure, connoting both achievement and enhanced self-control, it is simultaneously a source of great tension, bringing anxiety over the critical and damaging scrutiny of onlookers. For each positive aspect of a middle-class identity that emphasizes security and stability, there is a negative ramification or consequence that highlights the precariousness and * Because this paper draws from a decade of research, it has benefited from the help of a large number of people. Here I want to thank the most direct contributors.

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