Globalization and Ambivalence: Rural Outsourcing in Southern Bengal

Abstract

AbstractStudies of globalization in India have focused on high-tech industries, such as call centers in urban areas. But a widespread effect of the globalization of India's economy is the growth of “rural outsourcing”—the expansion of urban-based industries into the countryside. Rural outsourcing links to longer histories of decentralized manufacturing in India. This ethnography of the decentralized industry of sari embroidery in Southern Bengal shows that workers are ambivalent toward it. Among villagers who participate in the embroidery industry, I found three scales of ambivalence: ambivalence toward the product; toward the production process; and finally, toward the politics of this form of decentralized production. Ambivalence is not a transient or uncertain position of confusion or ambiguity. Rather, it is a widely-held expression of the dual and contradictory positions that workers and contractors hold in relation to the industry. I argue that the “frictions” of globalization find expression not just in resistance or contestation, but also in articulated positions of ambivalence toward globalization processes.