Global “Body Shopping”: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry
Author: Biao Xiang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date:November 2006
Summary:
Review Bravura ethnographic reportage. Of the many manuscripts and books I have read on anthropological forays into globalization issues, this is the one I would most want my students to have as an exemplar as they plan their research. (George E. Marcus, Rice University, coauthor of “Anthropology as Cultural Critique” ) Product Description How can America’s information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry’s flexible labor management system—a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global “Body Shopping” explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.
Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as “body shopping.” In this practice, a group of consultants—body shops—in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor, and upon a project’s completion they either place the workers with a different client or “bench” them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement. Underpinning this practice are unequal socioeconomic relations on multiple levels. While wealth in the New Economy is created in an increasingly abstract manner, everyday realities—stock markets in New York, benched IT workers in Sydney, dowries in Hyderabad, and women and children in Indian villages—sustain this flexibility.
ISBN:0691118515
Geomapping of Locations within Books
*Also saw Patience (After Sebald) by Dir. Grant Gee at the SFIFF 2012*
Droll British narration & interviews (although it had a certain feel to it, in retrospect). Slow in general, but beautiful images. Putting The Rings of Saturn on my reading list.
See the Geomapping of Places of Interest within The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald (trans. Michael Hulse): http://barbarahui.net/litmap/
Geomapping of the Bible & Moby Dick: http://graus.nu/projects/geomapping-books/
Has links to other Geomapped Books:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2010/03/rings-of-saturn-on-google-maps.html





