Papers by Arnaud Kaba
Third World Quarterly, 2023
In Firozabad-a city in North India which specialises in glass production and is famous for being ... more In Firozabad-a city in North India which specialises in glass production and is famous for being the centre of manufacturing for the billions of glass bangles worn by South Asian women-the Sheeshgarh caste used to master the most valuable skills. The transmission of these skills to other castes was a central stake, which highlights the relations between labour and capital, between dominants castes, between Muslims and Hindus. Therefore, this paper proposes the notion of trade consciousness to analyse the processes which shaped caste, gender and class relations around the common consciousness to be part of the same activity, the same community of practices. The paper then argues that understanding the way skills are introduced, transmitted and reproduced through master/apprentice relations, the everyday conviviality in the shopfloor, or in the mohallā, constitutes a crucial thread to understand the social transformation in Firozabad.
Anthropologie et Sociétés, 2022
Résumé
Cet article s’intéresse aux pratiques syndicales et aux stratégies de lutte pour l’obtenti... more Résumé
Cet article s’intéresse aux pratiques syndicales et aux stratégies de lutte pour l’obtention de droits dans le secteur du travail informel en Uttar Pradesh à travers l’exemple des travailleurs et travailleuses du verre de Firozabad. L’article considère la lutte pour les droits de ces travailleurs du secteur informel comme une forme de lutte pour une citoyenneté tangible, qui implique des droits sociaux et économiques et non simplement un statut légal sans aucun bénéfice. L’article analyse l’histoire récente des mouvements syndicaux de Firozabad ainsi que les ressorts du dernier mouvement en date, une grève des finisseurs et finisseuses de bracelets. Contrairement à ce qui est le cas chez les travailleurs migrants ruraux, dans un contexte de travail informel manufacturier de grande échelle comme celui de Firozabad, les logiques des luttes pour l’obtention de droits ne sont pas si différentes de celles dans le secteur formel. Mais, les travailleurs y sont dans une position de négociation spécifiquement faible. L’ethnographie confirme également que la revendication de droits et de meilleures conditions de travail et de vie passe presque inévitablement en Uttar Pradesh par l’usage de la force et de la violence. Ceci implique que les composantes d’une citoyenneté sociale et économique au-delà du seul statut légal de citoyen sont inévitablement liées à cette propension à peser dans un rapport de force marqué par les liens entre monde industriel, politique et criminel, ce qui contribue à brouiller les frontières entre légal et illégal.
Mots clés: Kaba, Gowda, verre, travail, syndicats, représentation, citoyenneté, violence politique, Inde
Abstract
This paper looks at trade union practices and strategies of struggle for rights in the informal labour sector in Uttar Pradesh through the example of glass workers in Firozabad. The paper considers the struggle for the rights of these informal workers as a form of struggle for tangible citizenship, which involves social and economic rights and not just legal status without any benefits. By analysing the recent history of labour movements in Firozabad and the dynamics of the most recent movement, a strike of bangle finishers, the paper argues that, unlike the case with rural migrant workers, in a context of large-scale informal manufacturing work such as Firozabad, the logics of struggles for rights are not so different from those in the formal sector. But workers there are in a specifically weak bargaining position. The ethnography also confirms that the demand for rights and better working and living conditions in Uttar Pradesh almost inevitably involves the use of force and violence. This implies that the components of social and economic citizenship beyond legal citizenship are inevitably linked to this propensity to influence a power relationship marked by industrial, political and criminal links, which contributes to the blurring of the boundaries between legal and illegal.
Keywords: Kaba, Gowda, Glass, work, unions, representation, citizenship, political violence, India
Ethnologie Française, 2022
Cet article traite de la conscience de métier dans la ville de Firozabad en prenant comme focale ... more Cet article traite de la conscience de métier dans la ville de Firozabad en prenant comme focale les récits d'élaboration, de transmission et de dépossession du savoir-faire des Sheesgarh dans le domaine de la verrerie. Cette caste musulmane du nord de l'Inde maîtrise le savoir-faire verrier qui irrigue la production centenaire de Firozabad. L'article montre que dans les récits des Sheeshgarh apparaît une double dépossession du savoir-faire : non seulement par le bas, quand ce dernier a été transmis en dehors de leur communauté, mais surtout par le haut, quand ces derniers se sont prolétarisés. Leurs luttes, pour regagner une autonomie, constituent une métonymie des luttes entre savoir-faire et capital industriel qui parcourent la ville.
Cette these part de l’etude de l’espace social de deux groupes d’ouvriers metallurgistes de Bhopa... more Cette these part de l’etude de l’espace social de deux groupes d’ouvriers metallurgistes de Bhopal. L’un est compose de musulmans habitant dans les quartiers autoconstruits pollues suite a la catastrophe industrielle qui a marque l’histoire contemporaine de la ville et travaillant dans des ateliers de metallurgie au sein de la vieille ville. L’autre est forme majoritairement d’hindous venant de villages parfois eloignes employes sur des chantiers de viaduc dans Bhopal et ses environs. Tous deux travaillent dans le secteur informel, dans un rapport a l’emploi incertain. En explorant leurs relations hors travail, elle decrit la maniere dont se construisent les rapports sociaux et les representations collectives. Elle montre egalement comment la confrontation a l’incertitude marquant de nombreux aspects de leur quotidien ainsi que le rapport au travail interagissent avec ces constructions. En s’interessant a la nature des relations au travail et a celle des rapports de domination, elle...
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2022
This paper takes place in Old Bhopal and goes beyond the disaster which marked the neighborhood’s... more This paper takes place in Old Bhopal and goes beyond the disaster which marked the neighborhood’s history to analyze the laboring life of the informal sector’s metalworkers. It argues that though the sector as a labour market is extremely loose and precarious, rich norms and values are shaping statuses that are holding the worker’s scattered trajectories together into communities of practice. Claims of mastery have to be proven during the concrete working process. However the scarcity of employment, the everlasting concurrence make the upward mobilities erratic and the collective resistances difficult. The ideal of independence is often hiding the fact that owning a workshop is mostly reserved for heirs. The statuses of skills mastery have no value outside of work, in North Bhopal’s poor settlements where the workers face an acute marginalization, as precarious and generally Muslim dwellers. As frequently failed breadwinners, they are striving to cope with the dominant masculine norms. However, the paper insists on the collective struggles in the settlements which make the bridge between the daily strife against the precariousness and the long-lasting struggle for inclusion into the city.
Journal of Agrarian Change. Preprint ; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joac.12521
In Madhya Pradesh, India, rural migrant workers hired in flyover's construction yards experiment ... more In Madhya Pradesh, India, rural migrant workers hired in flyover's construction yards experiment a space of work where the social practices relating to caste separation and hierarchy are temporally softened. This paper shows that these processes of conviviality, through mixing between castes and trans-communitarian work identities based on the hierarchies of labour, are taking part in the lower classes' long quest for less oppressive labour relations. Starting from the construction yard, and then going to the village, this paper shows that the labour relations involved in the circulation of rural migrants to the flyover construction yards are contributing to shaping their complex and flexible social consciousness in a context of slow reconfiguration of oppressive rural labour relations.
CSH-IFP working paper N°18, 2021
Though so many women in India do wear the glass bangles from Firozabad, little is known about the... more Though so many women in India do wear the glass bangles from Firozabad, little is known about the daily life and subjectivities of the glass workers. This anthropological paper about Firozabad’s glassworkers explains how their collective subjectivity, their craft consciousness has been shaped by their link to the glass, to the tool of production and its evolution, and by the city’s social and political context. The first part describes the technological and industrial evolution of the cluster, the second explains how the subjectivities of the glassworkers are shaped by their craft consciousness, itself based on the reproduction of the communities which have access to the skills, the last part analyses the relationship of the workers with exploitation, social struggles and the attempts of autonomy.
Erratum: as this paper was a work-in-progress report, some corrections have to be added:
Page 9: A deeper research on archives shows that the Japanese did not only make the blueprints of the ovens but that a Japanese expert was present in Firozabad. Also, the Austrian expert's name was Mozina. Finally, saying that German technologies were applied to the chemical mixes was incorrect as further research showed that both chemical and furnace technologies had at that time probably been inspired by many European influences, not only Germany.
Page 30: Deeper cross-checking of oral historical interviews showed that the CITU leader who got killed in 1983 is named Baba Shiv Kumar and was killed in a police lathi charge. Raja Ram Yadav was an MLA, also killed by industrialist's goons, in 1972
The Social Question in the Global World, 2018
Last French version before translation of my contribution to E. Bolgalska Martin and E. Matteudi'... more Last French version before translation of my contribution to E. Bolgalska Martin and E. Matteudi's collective book : The Social QUestion in the Global World, with the contributions of Z. Baumann and F. Laplantine
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the result of several research projects driven by researchers
from the social science laboratory (PACTE) of the University of Grenoble
Alpes and the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies which have, for many
years now, been working on the social question and how it is addressed on
a global scale.
The questions initiated by Jacques Barou (anthropologist, CNRS research
director), Ewa Bogalska-Martin (sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes) and Emmanuel Matteudi (urban planner, Professor at the
Aix-Marseille University), who are all members of the PACTE laboratory,
prompted the conference on the comparative analysis of the social
question in the light of the experiences of emerging (Latin America,
Africa, India) and European countries. The conference was held on the 10,
11 and 12 June 2015 in Grenoble. The event, which brought together 250
participants, was the strong point of the reflection visible in the texts
collected in this book.
Inspired by the studies of Zygmunt Bauman, who delivered the keynote
address, the conference organisers sought to put an end to the usual flow
of scientific exchange from developed to developing countries. Their
objective was to place the contributions and reflections from emerging
countries at the heart of the debate and examine the relevance of the
experiences and analyses of these countries to enrich the reflection and
practices of European researchers. The current theoretical concepts and
approaches used to address the social question in a global world, the focus
on the experiences of people living in vulnerable situations (poor,
migrants, women, people living at the margins of society, etc.) and the
practices of policy actors and civil society have been the subject of
intensive debate; this analytical debate has provided a wealth of
information and provided a framework for interpretation.
This debate and the resulting book would not have been possible without
the financial support of the academic community of the University of
Grenoble, the PACTE laboratory and the local authorities, especially those
from the Rhône-Alpes region and the cities of Saint Martin d'Hères and
Grenoble. We received valuable assistance from the French Development
Agency (AFD), the Ministry of Culture and the High Commission for the
Equality of Territories under the office of the French Prime Minister. We
owe the success of this project to many people. We would like to express
our gratitude to the authors:
Désci Arévalo, political scientist, Professor at the University of los
Andes, Colombia,
• Sébastien Avazano, Ph.D student at the Free University of
Brussels,
• Jacques Barou, anthropologist, researcher at the CNRS,
University of Grenoble Alpes, France
• Emmanuelle Barozet, sociologist, researcher at the University of
Chile, Chile,
• Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Leeds, United Kingdom,
• Francisco E. Beckenkamp Vargas, sociologist, Professor at the
Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil,
• Ewa Bogalska-Martin, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes, France
• Patrick Bruneteaux, political scientist, researcher at the Paris 1
University, France
• Marcelo Castellanos, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal
University of Bahia, Salvador, Brésil,
• Vincente Espinoza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Santiago, Chile,
• Maria Horehajova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel
University, Slovakia,
• Arnaud Kaba, Ph.D student at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Toulouse,
• Brahim Labari, sociologist, Professor at the University of Agadir,
Morocco,
• Robert Lafore, political scientist, Professor at the University of
Bordeaux,
• Francois Laplantine, anthropologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Lyon, France,
• Stéphanie Lecocq-Matteudi, legal practitioner, researcher at the
Lille 2 University, France,
• Tiago Lomöes, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
6 Acknowledgements
• Jana Marasova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia,
• Roula Masou, management sciences, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France,
• Emmanuel Matteudi, urbaniste, Professor at the Aix-Marseille
University, France
• Christian Adel Mirza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
the Republic, Uruguay,
• Agueda Pryska, sociologist, researcher at the Université Paris X
Nanterre, France and the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
• Oscar Rodrigez Salazar, political scientist, Professor at the
National University of Colombia, Colombia
• Jalloul Sghari, management science, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France
• Maria Uramova, economist, Professor at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia.
La revue du MAUSS permanente |TBP], 2021
This paper is about Fair Trade and business ethics. It analyses data from fieldwork conducted in ... more This paper is about Fair Trade and business ethics. It analyses data from fieldwork conducted in a famous Darjeeling tea plantation which practices biological and biodynamic farming and is labeled as Fair Trade. Its aim is to show how the plantation owner, using aggressive marketing of his engagement with eco-friendly and corporately-responsible management, has managed to regenerate an old patronage system more or less similar to industrial paternalism, but with its roots in colonial as well as indigenous domination structures. Disappointed by their unions, workers have had no alternative but to accept this form of governance, and some even acknowledge it as a good one. This case is a good example of how Fair Trade, which claims to empower workers, can be used to fuel a system which results in their disempowerment as social actors.
(Book Chapter) in Ghislaine Gallenga & Jérôme Soldani (Dir.), Sur le fil. Une anthropologie de l’... more (Book Chapter) in Ghislaine Gallenga & Jérôme Soldani (Dir.), Sur le fil. Une anthropologie de l’éthique entrepreneuriale, Paris, Éditions des archives contemporaines,
Autrepart, 2014
A culture of precarious labour? Becoming a day labourer in India
The focus of the article is on t... more A culture of precarious labour? Becoming a day labourer in India
The focus of the article is on two groups of young workers in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh. One group consists of urban youths from Bhopal slums who work in metal workshops, while the other comprises youths of rural origin performing cyclical migrations between the countryside and the flyover construction yards. Based on a long ethnographic fieldwork, the paper will show how these young men integrate into the labour market through a learning process that allows them to become labourers. It will then proceed to analyse how, as labourers, the young men develop a number of constant features in their conception of their day labourers’ condition and in their social aspirations. This will stress the fact that although these young men come from different worlds and evolve on separate labour markets, they tend to adopt a number of common values when faced with the precarious life of day labourers.
N.B The uploaded version is a last draft so it still contains some small errors, for exemple my affiliation (which is Toulouse instead of Paris).
Talks by Arnaud Kaba
Postfordist ethnoscapes: deindustrialization, work and unemployment in urban context", 2016
My presentation in Luca Rimoldi and Carlo Capello's panel : "Postfordist ethnoscapes: deindustria... more My presentation in Luca Rimoldi and Carlo Capello's panel : "Postfordist ethnoscapes: deindustrialization, work and unemployment in urban context"
Talk fot the CeMIS / CeMEAS's Conference, Rural-Urban Dynamics and Emergent Forms of Labor in India and China (Göttingen, February 22-23, 2016), 2016
This is a draft paper from 2013. Not to be circulated
Books by Arnaud Kaba
Les emballages de produits équitables nous montrent des images teintées d'exotisme représentant d... more Les emballages de produits équitables nous montrent des images teintées d'exotisme représentant des ouvriers agricoles et des fermiers qui travaillent la terre avec entrain. Mais que sait-on des réalités sociales présentes à l'autre bout de la chaîne ? Cet ouvrage qui fait l'ethnographie d'une plantation de thé équitable située près de Darjeeling, au nord-est de l'Inde, propose de répondre à cette question.
Book Reviews by Arnaud Kaba
Medicine Anthropology Theory, 2017
Review co-written with Kelley Sams of the movie; No country for Young GIrls, directed by Nabur Basu
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales , 2019
Dernier texte avant publication de ma recension pour les Annales de Puissance et Impuissance de l... more Dernier texte avant publication de ma recension pour les Annales de Puissance et Impuissance de la Valeur, Cécile Barrand, André Iteanu et Ismaël Moya (éds).
Media, Blogs, and Reports by Arnaud Kaba
Workplace Matters , 2022
In this podcast Dina Mehnaz Siddiqi, an anthropologist at NYU, introduces her long-term ethnograp... more In this podcast Dina Mehnaz Siddiqi, an anthropologist at NYU, introduces her long-term ethnographic study of garment workers in Bangladesh. She reflects on the historical debates between Marxists and culturalists that inspired her as an undergraduate in Dhaka in the 1990s to study women working in Bangladesh's export garment industry. She recalls how her expectations were challenged by the subjectivity, morality, and politics of the workers she encountered. She shows how their new identities were shaped by the spatiality of the workplace, as well as their positions in the city and in the middleclass imagination of the nation. She outlines how this changed over the last four decades, and how this came about due to the strategies of transnational capital and the Bangladeshi state, as well as the everyday struggles and militant protests of workers themselves. She emphasizes the importance of clearly locating the industry in the global context established by supply chains linking multinational corporations, national governments, local capitalists, and workers in asymmetrical fashion. She also reflects on the paucity of research on environmental justice in the study of the garment industry and points to the lack of attention to labor issues in the feminist agenda. Lastly, Dina calls upon anthropologists, historians, and sociologists to act more as public intellectuals and engage in wider social debates.
Workplace matters podcasts are produced by: Görkem Akgöz, Prerna Agarwal, Hasan Ashraf, Rick Halpern, Arnaud Kaba, Bridget Kenny, Sandra Lourenço, Aslı Odman, Nico Pizzolato, Mariana Stoler, Christian Strümpell.
Uploads
Papers by Arnaud Kaba
Cet article s’intéresse aux pratiques syndicales et aux stratégies de lutte pour l’obtention de droits dans le secteur du travail informel en Uttar Pradesh à travers l’exemple des travailleurs et travailleuses du verre de Firozabad. L’article considère la lutte pour les droits de ces travailleurs du secteur informel comme une forme de lutte pour une citoyenneté tangible, qui implique des droits sociaux et économiques et non simplement un statut légal sans aucun bénéfice. L’article analyse l’histoire récente des mouvements syndicaux de Firozabad ainsi que les ressorts du dernier mouvement en date, une grève des finisseurs et finisseuses de bracelets. Contrairement à ce qui est le cas chez les travailleurs migrants ruraux, dans un contexte de travail informel manufacturier de grande échelle comme celui de Firozabad, les logiques des luttes pour l’obtention de droits ne sont pas si différentes de celles dans le secteur formel. Mais, les travailleurs y sont dans une position de négociation spécifiquement faible. L’ethnographie confirme également que la revendication de droits et de meilleures conditions de travail et de vie passe presque inévitablement en Uttar Pradesh par l’usage de la force et de la violence. Ceci implique que les composantes d’une citoyenneté sociale et économique au-delà du seul statut légal de citoyen sont inévitablement liées à cette propension à peser dans un rapport de force marqué par les liens entre monde industriel, politique et criminel, ce qui contribue à brouiller les frontières entre légal et illégal.
Mots clés: Kaba, Gowda, verre, travail, syndicats, représentation, citoyenneté, violence politique, Inde
Abstract
This paper looks at trade union practices and strategies of struggle for rights in the informal labour sector in Uttar Pradesh through the example of glass workers in Firozabad. The paper considers the struggle for the rights of these informal workers as a form of struggle for tangible citizenship, which involves social and economic rights and not just legal status without any benefits. By analysing the recent history of labour movements in Firozabad and the dynamics of the most recent movement, a strike of bangle finishers, the paper argues that, unlike the case with rural migrant workers, in a context of large-scale informal manufacturing work such as Firozabad, the logics of struggles for rights are not so different from those in the formal sector. But workers there are in a specifically weak bargaining position. The ethnography also confirms that the demand for rights and better working and living conditions in Uttar Pradesh almost inevitably involves the use of force and violence. This implies that the components of social and economic citizenship beyond legal citizenship are inevitably linked to this propensity to influence a power relationship marked by industrial, political and criminal links, which contributes to the blurring of the boundaries between legal and illegal.
Keywords: Kaba, Gowda, Glass, work, unions, representation, citizenship, political violence, India
Erratum: as this paper was a work-in-progress report, some corrections have to be added:
Page 9: A deeper research on archives shows that the Japanese did not only make the blueprints of the ovens but that a Japanese expert was present in Firozabad. Also, the Austrian expert's name was Mozina. Finally, saying that German technologies were applied to the chemical mixes was incorrect as further research showed that both chemical and furnace technologies had at that time probably been inspired by many European influences, not only Germany.
Page 30: Deeper cross-checking of oral historical interviews showed that the CITU leader who got killed in 1983 is named Baba Shiv Kumar and was killed in a police lathi charge. Raja Ram Yadav was an MLA, also killed by industrialist's goons, in 1972
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the result of several research projects driven by researchers
from the social science laboratory (PACTE) of the University of Grenoble
Alpes and the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies which have, for many
years now, been working on the social question and how it is addressed on
a global scale.
The questions initiated by Jacques Barou (anthropologist, CNRS research
director), Ewa Bogalska-Martin (sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes) and Emmanuel Matteudi (urban planner, Professor at the
Aix-Marseille University), who are all members of the PACTE laboratory,
prompted the conference on the comparative analysis of the social
question in the light of the experiences of emerging (Latin America,
Africa, India) and European countries. The conference was held on the 10,
11 and 12 June 2015 in Grenoble. The event, which brought together 250
participants, was the strong point of the reflection visible in the texts
collected in this book.
Inspired by the studies of Zygmunt Bauman, who delivered the keynote
address, the conference organisers sought to put an end to the usual flow
of scientific exchange from developed to developing countries. Their
objective was to place the contributions and reflections from emerging
countries at the heart of the debate and examine the relevance of the
experiences and analyses of these countries to enrich the reflection and
practices of European researchers. The current theoretical concepts and
approaches used to address the social question in a global world, the focus
on the experiences of people living in vulnerable situations (poor,
migrants, women, people living at the margins of society, etc.) and the
practices of policy actors and civil society have been the subject of
intensive debate; this analytical debate has provided a wealth of
information and provided a framework for interpretation.
This debate and the resulting book would not have been possible without
the financial support of the academic community of the University of
Grenoble, the PACTE laboratory and the local authorities, especially those
from the Rhône-Alpes region and the cities of Saint Martin d'Hères and
Grenoble. We received valuable assistance from the French Development
Agency (AFD), the Ministry of Culture and the High Commission for the
Equality of Territories under the office of the French Prime Minister. We
owe the success of this project to many people. We would like to express
our gratitude to the authors:
Désci Arévalo, political scientist, Professor at the University of los
Andes, Colombia,
• Sébastien Avazano, Ph.D student at the Free University of
Brussels,
• Jacques Barou, anthropologist, researcher at the CNRS,
University of Grenoble Alpes, France
• Emmanuelle Barozet, sociologist, researcher at the University of
Chile, Chile,
• Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Leeds, United Kingdom,
• Francisco E. Beckenkamp Vargas, sociologist, Professor at the
Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil,
• Ewa Bogalska-Martin, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes, France
• Patrick Bruneteaux, political scientist, researcher at the Paris 1
University, France
• Marcelo Castellanos, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal
University of Bahia, Salvador, Brésil,
• Vincente Espinoza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Santiago, Chile,
• Maria Horehajova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel
University, Slovakia,
• Arnaud Kaba, Ph.D student at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Toulouse,
• Brahim Labari, sociologist, Professor at the University of Agadir,
Morocco,
• Robert Lafore, political scientist, Professor at the University of
Bordeaux,
• Francois Laplantine, anthropologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Lyon, France,
• Stéphanie Lecocq-Matteudi, legal practitioner, researcher at the
Lille 2 University, France,
• Tiago Lomöes, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
6 Acknowledgements
• Jana Marasova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia,
• Roula Masou, management sciences, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France,
• Emmanuel Matteudi, urbaniste, Professor at the Aix-Marseille
University, France
• Christian Adel Mirza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
the Republic, Uruguay,
• Agueda Pryska, sociologist, researcher at the Université Paris X
Nanterre, France and the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
• Oscar Rodrigez Salazar, political scientist, Professor at the
National University of Colombia, Colombia
• Jalloul Sghari, management science, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France
• Maria Uramova, economist, Professor at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia.
The focus of the article is on two groups of young workers in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh. One group consists of urban youths from Bhopal slums who work in metal workshops, while the other comprises youths of rural origin performing cyclical migrations between the countryside and the flyover construction yards. Based on a long ethnographic fieldwork, the paper will show how these young men integrate into the labour market through a learning process that allows them to become labourers. It will then proceed to analyse how, as labourers, the young men develop a number of constant features in their conception of their day labourers’ condition and in their social aspirations. This will stress the fact that although these young men come from different worlds and evolve on separate labour markets, they tend to adopt a number of common values when faced with the precarious life of day labourers.
N.B The uploaded version is a last draft so it still contains some small errors, for exemple my affiliation (which is Toulouse instead of Paris).
Talks by Arnaud Kaba
Books by Arnaud Kaba
Book Reviews by Arnaud Kaba
Media, Blogs, and Reports by Arnaud Kaba
Workplace matters podcasts are produced by: Görkem Akgöz, Prerna Agarwal, Hasan Ashraf, Rick Halpern, Arnaud Kaba, Bridget Kenny, Sandra Lourenço, Aslı Odman, Nico Pizzolato, Mariana Stoler, Christian Strümpell.
Cet article s’intéresse aux pratiques syndicales et aux stratégies de lutte pour l’obtention de droits dans le secteur du travail informel en Uttar Pradesh à travers l’exemple des travailleurs et travailleuses du verre de Firozabad. L’article considère la lutte pour les droits de ces travailleurs du secteur informel comme une forme de lutte pour une citoyenneté tangible, qui implique des droits sociaux et économiques et non simplement un statut légal sans aucun bénéfice. L’article analyse l’histoire récente des mouvements syndicaux de Firozabad ainsi que les ressorts du dernier mouvement en date, une grève des finisseurs et finisseuses de bracelets. Contrairement à ce qui est le cas chez les travailleurs migrants ruraux, dans un contexte de travail informel manufacturier de grande échelle comme celui de Firozabad, les logiques des luttes pour l’obtention de droits ne sont pas si différentes de celles dans le secteur formel. Mais, les travailleurs y sont dans une position de négociation spécifiquement faible. L’ethnographie confirme également que la revendication de droits et de meilleures conditions de travail et de vie passe presque inévitablement en Uttar Pradesh par l’usage de la force et de la violence. Ceci implique que les composantes d’une citoyenneté sociale et économique au-delà du seul statut légal de citoyen sont inévitablement liées à cette propension à peser dans un rapport de force marqué par les liens entre monde industriel, politique et criminel, ce qui contribue à brouiller les frontières entre légal et illégal.
Mots clés: Kaba, Gowda, verre, travail, syndicats, représentation, citoyenneté, violence politique, Inde
Abstract
This paper looks at trade union practices and strategies of struggle for rights in the informal labour sector in Uttar Pradesh through the example of glass workers in Firozabad. The paper considers the struggle for the rights of these informal workers as a form of struggle for tangible citizenship, which involves social and economic rights and not just legal status without any benefits. By analysing the recent history of labour movements in Firozabad and the dynamics of the most recent movement, a strike of bangle finishers, the paper argues that, unlike the case with rural migrant workers, in a context of large-scale informal manufacturing work such as Firozabad, the logics of struggles for rights are not so different from those in the formal sector. But workers there are in a specifically weak bargaining position. The ethnography also confirms that the demand for rights and better working and living conditions in Uttar Pradesh almost inevitably involves the use of force and violence. This implies that the components of social and economic citizenship beyond legal citizenship are inevitably linked to this propensity to influence a power relationship marked by industrial, political and criminal links, which contributes to the blurring of the boundaries between legal and illegal.
Keywords: Kaba, Gowda, Glass, work, unions, representation, citizenship, political violence, India
Erratum: as this paper was a work-in-progress report, some corrections have to be added:
Page 9: A deeper research on archives shows that the Japanese did not only make the blueprints of the ovens but that a Japanese expert was present in Firozabad. Also, the Austrian expert's name was Mozina. Finally, saying that German technologies were applied to the chemical mixes was incorrect as further research showed that both chemical and furnace technologies had at that time probably been inspired by many European influences, not only Germany.
Page 30: Deeper cross-checking of oral historical interviews showed that the CITU leader who got killed in 1983 is named Baba Shiv Kumar and was killed in a police lathi charge. Raja Ram Yadav was an MLA, also killed by industrialist's goons, in 1972
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the result of several research projects driven by researchers
from the social science laboratory (PACTE) of the University of Grenoble
Alpes and the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies which have, for many
years now, been working on the social question and how it is addressed on
a global scale.
The questions initiated by Jacques Barou (anthropologist, CNRS research
director), Ewa Bogalska-Martin (sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes) and Emmanuel Matteudi (urban planner, Professor at the
Aix-Marseille University), who are all members of the PACTE laboratory,
prompted the conference on the comparative analysis of the social
question in the light of the experiences of emerging (Latin America,
Africa, India) and European countries. The conference was held on the 10,
11 and 12 June 2015 in Grenoble. The event, which brought together 250
participants, was the strong point of the reflection visible in the texts
collected in this book.
Inspired by the studies of Zygmunt Bauman, who delivered the keynote
address, the conference organisers sought to put an end to the usual flow
of scientific exchange from developed to developing countries. Their
objective was to place the contributions and reflections from emerging
countries at the heart of the debate and examine the relevance of the
experiences and analyses of these countries to enrich the reflection and
practices of European researchers. The current theoretical concepts and
approaches used to address the social question in a global world, the focus
on the experiences of people living in vulnerable situations (poor,
migrants, women, people living at the margins of society, etc.) and the
practices of policy actors and civil society have been the subject of
intensive debate; this analytical debate has provided a wealth of
information and provided a framework for interpretation.
This debate and the resulting book would not have been possible without
the financial support of the academic community of the University of
Grenoble, the PACTE laboratory and the local authorities, especially those
from the Rhône-Alpes region and the cities of Saint Martin d'Hères and
Grenoble. We received valuable assistance from the French Development
Agency (AFD), the Ministry of Culture and the High Commission for the
Equality of Territories under the office of the French Prime Minister. We
owe the success of this project to many people. We would like to express
our gratitude to the authors:
Désci Arévalo, political scientist, Professor at the University of los
Andes, Colombia,
• Sébastien Avazano, Ph.D student at the Free University of
Brussels,
• Jacques Barou, anthropologist, researcher at the CNRS,
University of Grenoble Alpes, France
• Emmanuelle Barozet, sociologist, researcher at the University of
Chile, Chile,
• Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Leeds, United Kingdom,
• Francisco E. Beckenkamp Vargas, sociologist, Professor at the
Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil,
• Ewa Bogalska-Martin, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Grenoble Alpes, France
• Patrick Bruneteaux, political scientist, researcher at the Paris 1
University, France
• Marcelo Castellanos, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal
University of Bahia, Salvador, Brésil,
• Vincente Espinoza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
Santiago, Chile,
• Maria Horehajova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel
University, Slovakia,
• Arnaud Kaba, Ph.D student at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Toulouse,
• Brahim Labari, sociologist, Professor at the University of Agadir,
Morocco,
• Robert Lafore, political scientist, Professor at the University of
Bordeaux,
• Francois Laplantine, anthropologist, emeritus Professor at the
University of Lyon, France,
• Stéphanie Lecocq-Matteudi, legal practitioner, researcher at the
Lille 2 University, France,
• Tiago Lomöes, anthropologist, researcher at the Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
6 Acknowledgements
• Jana Marasova, economist, researcher at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia,
• Roula Masou, management sciences, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France,
• Emmanuel Matteudi, urbaniste, Professor at the Aix-Marseille
University, France
• Christian Adel Mirza, sociologist, Professor at the University of
the Republic, Uruguay,
• Agueda Pryska, sociologist, researcher at the Université Paris X
Nanterre, France and the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
• Oscar Rodrigez Salazar, political scientist, Professor at the
National University of Colombia, Colombia
• Jalloul Sghari, management science, researcher at the Paris
Descartes University, France
• Maria Uramova, economist, Professor at the Matej Bel University,
Slovakia.
The focus of the article is on two groups of young workers in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh. One group consists of urban youths from Bhopal slums who work in metal workshops, while the other comprises youths of rural origin performing cyclical migrations between the countryside and the flyover construction yards. Based on a long ethnographic fieldwork, the paper will show how these young men integrate into the labour market through a learning process that allows them to become labourers. It will then proceed to analyse how, as labourers, the young men develop a number of constant features in their conception of their day labourers’ condition and in their social aspirations. This will stress the fact that although these young men come from different worlds and evolve on separate labour markets, they tend to adopt a number of common values when faced with the precarious life of day labourers.
N.B The uploaded version is a last draft so it still contains some small errors, for exemple my affiliation (which is Toulouse instead of Paris).
Workplace matters podcasts are produced by: Görkem Akgöz, Prerna Agarwal, Hasan Ashraf, Rick Halpern, Arnaud Kaba, Bridget Kenny, Sandra Lourenço, Aslı Odman, Nico Pizzolato, Mariana Stoler, Christian Strümpell.