Urban Altruism/Urban Corruption

Abstract

In chapter nine, Shankar leaves Bangalore and heads to Hubli-Dharwad, a conurbation in North Karnataka where Sahayaaka runs a professional development retreat. At the retreat Shankar observes that fieldworkers are racialized in ways that assume their potential for corruption or that value them solely for their local-specific funds of knowledge. In so doing, fieldworkers find themselves caught between the work they are expected to do and the skill development they have been told will allow them some form of upward mobility. For many fieldworkers, the end result is simply a doubling and tripling of their labor.