Living Class in Urban India

Dickey, Sara

doi:10.36019/9780813583945

Cited by 30 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In an era of heightened middle‐class aspirations (e.g., Dickey ), class change can seem achievable for a highly intelligent and industrious individual woman, but it can make her marriage near impossible and steer her into a state of class and social limbo with uncertain belonging.…”

Section: Middle‐class Aspirations and Gendered Mismatches Of Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Being Single in India: Gendered Identities, Class Mobilities, and Personhoods in Flux

Lamb¹

2018

Ethos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the stories of single women living in the urban metropolis of Kolkata, and in smaller towns and villages of West Bengal, as a means to illuminate emerging possibilities and constraints of selfhood for women in contemporary India. In so doing, the piece examines the ways gendered identities intersect with other forces and ideals at stake, including the institution of heterosexual marriage, class mobilities, and values surrounding individualist versus relational personhood. Because they are positioned outside the norm, those who live singly offer an unusually insightful perspective on their wider society's values and institutions. In these ways, the narratives of three single women and others each illuminate their tellers’ intricate subjectivities as well as offer broader social‐cultural critique. Their stories reveal the ambiguity, painful consequences, and sometimes hopefulness surrounding the “choice” to be single for women and suggest that social recognition and belonging are even more important than independence and true singlehood in the lives of those who live outside marriage in India. [belonging, class, gender, self, sexuality, marriage]

show abstract

Section: Middle‐class Aspirations and Gendered Mismatches Of Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See also Dickey (, focusing on South India) and Sayer (, drawing on social theory and moral philosophy), who explore the critical significance of class as a form of recognition and belonging.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Being Single in India: Gendered Identities, Class Mobilities, and Personhoods in Flux

Lamb¹

2018

Ethos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In claiming not to be laborers, trade workers were extending and reworking larger understandings of class and labor in India. Particularly relevant here are the new “middle‐class” identities and anxieties that emerged around liberalization (Dickey 2016; Frøystad 2006). In this context of increased attention on class aspirations, the image of the laborer is particularly poignant as a sign of feared downward class mobility.…”

Section: The Figure Of the Laborermentioning

confidence: 99%

Working against Labor: Struggles for Self in the Indian Construction Industry

Sargent

2020

Anthropology of Work Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…For young men who live in these parts of the city, the professional selfie and its deployment of an aesthetic language of fantasy and escapism allows them to obfuscate 5. The showmanship of young men on Facebook-evident from their performances as "heroes"-is reminiscent of Sarah Dickey's (2016) observation that lower-middleclass residents in Madurai put on a "showcase" exterior in the public eye in order to claim economic, cultural, and social capital.…”

Section: Asserting Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

The selfie speaks a thousand words

Advani

2020

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While the selfie has come to symbolize notions of selfhood in the age of social media, the photograph that has become a visual trope across the Facebook accounts of lower-middle-class young men in the western Indian city of Pune offers a different reading of online selfhood. In this article, I discuss the creation of a localized selfie-the "professional selfie"-in which young men stage their masculinity by engaging in a mimetic economy of exchanging characteristics with film heroes. In contrast to Susan Sontag's (2003) theorization of the intimate photograph, the professional selfie is devoid of interiority. Far from unaware of the camera in the manner described by Sontag, young men in Pune utilize the services of photographers to capture them at a distance and conceal their surroundings, thereby creating relations of social distance and distinction with their peers on Facebook.

show abstract

Living Class in Urban India

Cited by 30 publications

References 0 publications

Being Single in India: Gendered Identities, Class Mobilities, and Personhoods in Flux

Being Single in India: Gendered Identities, Class Mobilities, and Personhoods in Flux

Working against Labor: Struggles for Self in the Indian Construction Industry

The selfie speaks a thousand words

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About