Jugād: Youth and Enterprise in India

Jeffrey, Craig; Young, Stephen

doi:10.1080/00045608.2013.847757

Cited by 48 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Motion said: ‘ Leo ni leo, kesho ni baadaye [‘Today is today, and tomorrow is later’ in Swahili], and you don't think of tomorrow because you are scared.’ The struggle between the hustler and the fool centres on the courage to imagine a (better) future. A hustler, as Kingi put it, ‘has to stay alert and focused [ kukaa rada in Sheng ] and take opportunities’ to build tomorrow (see also Vigh 2011; Jeffrey and Young 2014), whereas the group members persistently emphasized that they had no power to change their situation because there were no opportunities. However, this, the current baze members claimed, did not mean that they were fools.…”

Section: Hustlers and Foolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi ‘ghettos’

Stapele¹

2021

Africa

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Hustling as a concept has travelled through the global soundscapes of impoverished, neglected, racialized and otherwise marginalized urban settings. The widespread rearticulation of the term ‘hustling’ in a broad range of urban languages reveals that its use in particular forms of Black Atlantic music cultures speaks to shared experiences worldwide. Simultaneously, it shows the flexibility of this term to acquire new and unfolding meanings. This article focuses on the modes in which poor young men in Nairobi (re)deploy, translate and practise hustling to fit immediate circumstances and imagine possible futures, and on the meanings these men produce in the process. I argue that interrogating hustling as a practice provides insights into gendered experiences of urban life worlds in the underserved and highly policed areas of Nairobi, which may tentatively resonate with young men in comparable positions worldwide. I specifically examine how positions of (junior) manhood are configured by localized hustling practices to elucidate how navigating fear and hope, while facing extreme uncertainty, simultaneously defines and undermines their sense of manhood.

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Section: Hustlers and Foolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi ‘ghettos’

Stapele¹

2021

Africa

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“…Silva’s (2011) study of highway franchises in Chile demonstrates how improvisation resulting from economic liberalisation reinforces the power of the state through a lack of accountability, while falling most heavily on the most vulnerable communities. Where ordinary people improvise in this mode, it is out of need, with improvisation often forced upon them by a neoliberal state that has withdrawn infrastructures and safety nets and encourages individual entrepreneurialism (Jeffrey and Young, 2014; McFarlane, 2011). This mode of improvisation tends to cement existing structures rather than challenge or re-interpret them.…”

Section: Three Modes Of Urban Improvisingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvising urban spaces, inhabiting the in-between

Müller

Трубина

2020

Environ Plan D

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This paper discusses improvisation as a liminal practice of inhabiting the in-between that marks urban spaces from squats and brownfields to communal gardens, from infrastructural maintenance and urban living labs to political protest and solidarity in times of crisis. It shows how improvisation emerges in the interstices between uncertain flux and ossified rigidities to construct in-between spaces of ambiguous political openings even in ostensibly formal, rigid contexts. To that end, it draws on documents, media reports, interviews and participant observation to analyse the multiple mutations of what eventually became the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre in Ekaterinburg, a cultural flagship in Russia’s third largest city. Morphed from an abandoned office block into a memorial multi-purpose complex, the Yeltsin Centre is the product of elites and ordinary people responding to conjunctural openings in seemingly inert structures. While highlighting the political openings made possible by improvisation inhabiting the in-between, the paper also underscores the ambiguous nature of this practice and its limits.

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“…Hence, in contrast to contemporary entrepreneurship, jugaad has been seen as a domain of the marginal, even subaltern, subject. For example, Jeffrey and Young () place jugaad in the context of a larger informal economy where unemployed young men often take the role of “fixers,” hustlers, and brokers for actors embedded within formal enterprises. Their position outside the formal economy makes circumvention of laws inevitable, and the term jugaad often serves as a euphemism for this corruption.…”

Section: Being Entrepreneurial In India: From Postcolonial To (Neo)limentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this sense, the ordinary masses (rather than expert scientists or engineers) were seen as a resource of wealth creation for the nation‐state. As more and more previously reserved sectors were opened up to private, foreign capital, state policies gradually began to incorporate jugaad into the discourse of the “new India.” Ordinary Indians were called on to use their latent jugaad skills to alleviate the vast socioeconomic inequalities and “catch up” with the socioeconomic elites (Jeffrey and Young ; Kaur ). In this context, the lack of affordable and accessible public services created “an ideal laboratory condition within which a culture of innovation takes birth” (Kaur , 313).…”

Section: Being Entrepreneurial In India: From Postcolonial To (Neo)limentioning

confidence: 99%

Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India

Ghosh

2020

Economic Anthropology

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In recent years, a new class of entrepreneurs and investors has emerged in India. In this article, based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with start-ups in Delhi, I examine how entrepreneurs are valued by investors and the sociocultural implications of this process. I make two arguments. First, the criteria used to judge creditworthiness, including personal networks, technological capability, and ability to undertake speculative risk, serve as signals of an entrepreneur's value to prospective investors. Second, as investors acknowledge, the investment is made in the specific personhood of the entrepreneur rather than the business plan. Therefore the process of seeking investment capital, far from being simply a means of scaling one's business, is an act of cultural construction. The entrepreneur's value as wealth-in-people is not judged objectively; rather, it is created through the process of pitching and securing investment commitments. One of the contributions of this research is to center the real and perceived relationship between entrepreneurs and investors in studying start-up spaces in India. Examining this relationship reveals the forms of economic, sociocultural, and moral value that are interwoven with each other. The multiple, often contradictory meanings attached to entrepreneurship are negotiated through the prism of investment, which emerges as a dynamic site for constructing and contesting entrepreneurial identities.

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Jugād: Youth and Enterprise in India

Cited by 48 publications

References 29 publications

Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi ‘ghettos’

Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi ‘ghettos’

Improvising urban spaces, inhabiting the in-between

Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India

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