“I’ll Be Like Water”

Gender and Society - Tập 27 Số 6 - Trang 777-798 - 2013
Gowri Vijayakumar1
1University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Tóm tắt

This article examines the ways in which ideologies of aspiration, inclusion, and women’s empowerment associated with India’s globalizing knowledge economy are re-framed by young women workers in a small-town business-process outsourcing (BPO) center two hours outside of Bangalore. Drawing on forty in-depth interviews, I show that, in contrast to their managers’ expectations of individualized work aspirations, women workers draw on both individualistic and domestically embedded articulations of the future in a formulation I call “flexible aspirations.” In articulating flexible aspirations, they draw both on the gendered language of neoliberal self-improvement for the global economy and on the nationalist ideal of rural middle-class feminine domesticity. While insisting that the future is uncertain, young women use flexible aspirations as a symbolic resource to distinguish themselves from both old-fashioned village housewives and promiscuous urban call center girls. I briefly compare these flexible aspirations to young men workers’ strategic articulations of aspiration, which, rather than relinquishing hopes to an unpredictable future, adjust plans to fit known social limitations. This article, drawing on feminist interpretations of Bourdieu, extends the literature on the Indian middle classes by analyzing young women’s aspirations in non-elite social locations. It builds on this feminist scholarship by highlighting ways in which young women use articulations of flexible aspiration as a mode of gendered class distinction.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

10.1080/03085149900000020

10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00110.x

10.1086/652916

Bourdieu Pierre, 1984, Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste

Census of India. 2001. http://censusindia.gov.in.

10.1525/ae.1989.16.4.02a00020

10.1177/092137409801000205

Deshpande Satish, 2003, Contemporary India: A sociological view

Donner Henrike, 2011, Being middle-class in India: A way of life

10.1515/9781400821723

10.1177/016344300022005005

Fernandes Leela, 2006, India’s new middle class: Democratic politics in an era of economic reform

10.1080/14672710601073028

10.1080/13639080120106730

Friedman Thomas L., 2010, The New York Times

10.1086/664542

Ganguly-Scrase Ruchira, 2009, Globalisation and the middle classes in India: The social and cultural impact of neoliberal reforms

10.2307/800366

10.1057/sub.2008.28

Government of Karnataka, 2006, Karnataka human development report 2005

Harvey David, 2007, A brief history of neoliberalism

10.1515/9780804775137

10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.00443.x

Jeffrey Craig, 2008, Degrees without freedom?: Education, masculinities, and unemployment in north India

Kingdon Geeta Gandhi. 1997. Does the labour market explain lower female schooling in India? DEDPS Discussion Paper 1. Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, London School of Economics.

10.1086/493273

10.1215/9780822391241

MacLeod Jay, 1987, Ain’t no makin’ it: Leveled aspirations in low-income neighborhoods

10.1007/BF00287335

10.3102/00028312015001067

Massey Doreen, 1994, Space, place, and gender

Mazzarella William. 2004. Middle class. In Keywords in South Asian Studies, edited by Dwyer Rachel M. http://www.soas.ac.uk/southasianstudies/keywords/file24808.pdf.

10.1177/14647001030042003

10.1080/09502380701279044

NASSCOM. 2010. Impact of IT-BPO industry in India: A decade in review. http://www.nasscom.in/nasscom/templates/normalpage.aspx?id=60190.

NASSCOM and McKinsey & Company. 2005. The NASSCOM-McKinsey report 2005: Extending India’s leadership of the global IT and BPO industries.

10.1177/0891243212473199

10.1007/s11186-007-9024-2

10.1007/s11133-009-9125-5

10.1215/9780822393436

Ray Raka, 2011, Elite and everyman: The cultural politics of the Indian middle classes

10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.09.002

Ribeiro John. 2010. NASSCOM makes a beeline to India’s villages. PCWorld Business Center, June 10, 2010, http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/198460/nasscom_makes_a_beeline_to_indias_villages.html.

10.1080/09540250701442666

Schneider Barbara L., 1999, The ambitious generation: America’s teenagers, motivated but directionless

10.2307/2673221

10.1016/j.rssm.2007.11.004

Skeggs Beverley, 2004, Class, self, culture

10.1080/01411926.2010.481358

Upadhya Carol, 2011, Elite and everyman: The cultural politics of the Indian middle classes

10.1080/09540250303864

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Gender and Society

Tập 27 Số 6

777-798

Thông tin tác giả