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How is labouring enabled through the body? A case study of manual workers in rural India

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09584930600839107

1469-364X

Louise Waite,

Crafts, Textile, and Design

Abstract Manual labour has become less prevalent in western contexts, but livelihoods based on physical work remain pervasive in many developing countries. It is such a world of seasonally migrating manual labourers in India that this paper explores. It focuses on how seemingly vulnerable and malnourished bodies in this rural context are enabled to labour. The necessity of mobilising bodies to perform crucial labouring implies that bodies are primary resources for the working poor. I do not wish to suggest a reductionist understanding of the body as a strictly corporeal asset, as is often presupposed in nutritional modelling. Emerging labouring performances emanate from the body, but they are derived from far more than mere flesh and bones. Work capacity may be theoretically predictable from nutritional status, but work capacity is not synonymous with labouring performance. Such labouring performances are enabled through a whole suite of social, cultural, environmental and political capacities that are inflected into individuals to become the resource that is conveniently packaged as 'the body'. The research for this paper is drawn from 10 months of grounded ethnography in Maharashtra focused on 22 case-study households. Through an exploration of these families' work experiences, food intakes, habituated learning, psychological realms and cultural beliefs and practices, this paper contributes to our understanding of how labourers are able, can choose, or are allowed to apply their bodies at work. Notes 1. L. McDowell, 'Cultures of labour—work, employment, identity and economic transformations', in K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds), Handbook of Cultural Geography (London: Sage, 2003), pp 98–115. 2. J. Breman, Footloose Labour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 3. F. Ellis, Rural Livelihoods and Diversity in Developing Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 4. See P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984); and P. Bourdieu, 'The forms of capital', in J. Richardson (ed), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241–257. 5. I do not want to imply that poor labouring bodies are not the locus of power and status (in Bourdieu's 'physical capital' sense), but are simply my different but related area of focus in this paper. See ibid, 1986. 6. L. Waite, Embodied Working Lives (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005). 7. This point is influenced by the work of B. Fay, who considered that bodies are inscribed by the forces of domination in a society not only discursively but also somatically. See B. Fay, Critical Social Science. Liberation and its Limits (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). 8. E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). 9. See E. Goffman, Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organisation of Gatherings (New York: The Free Press, 1963); M. Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: The Cresset Press, 1970); and M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981). 10. The separation of these features should not be taken to obscure the fact that some of them are inter-connected and they may mutually influence each other and emerging working experiences. This account is further not claimed to be exhaustive. 11. These groups are all defined as scheduled tribes in Maharashtra by K.S. Singh in his exhaustive mapping of the tribes in India. See K.S. Singh, The Scheduled Tribes (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 12. See P. Crang, 'It's showtime—on the workplace geographies of display in a restaurant in southeast England', Environment and Planning D, Vol 12, No 6, 1994, pp 675–704; R. Leidner, 'Serving hamburgers and selling insurance—gender, work, and identity in interactive service jobs', Gender and Society, Vol 5, No 2, 1991, pp 154–177; and R. Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 13. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from subjects interviewed during the fieldwork research in Sonav. 14. This is in line with J. Pottier urging attention to the 'anthropology of food' and surrounding social dynamics. See J. Pottier, Anthropology of Food: The Social Dynamics of Food Security (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 15. Actual individual food intakes may also be subject to complex systems of intra-household entitlements and claims to resources. See A.K. Sen, Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982); and A.K. Sen, Resources, Values and Development (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). 16. R. Burghart, 'The cultural context of diet, disease and the body', in G.A. Harrison and J.C. Waterlow (eds), Diet and Disease in Traditional and Developing Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp 307–325. 17. Burghart talks of Hindus seeing the body as 'food-body' in line with the idea that 'you are what you eat'; see Burghart, op cit, Ref 16, p 309. 18. Although altered needs derived from changes in work are important, they should be seen alongside typical pre-harvest deprivation periods that are more usually associated with seasonality. See R. Chambers, R. Longhurst and A. Pacey (eds), Seasonal Dimensions to Rural Poverty (London: Pinter, 1981); B. Agarwal, 'Social security and the family: coping with seasonality and calamity in Rural India', in E. Ahmae, J. Dreze, J. Hills and A. Sen (eds), Social Security in Developing Countries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp 171–246; G.J. Gill, Seasonality and Agriculture in the Developing World. A Problem of the Poor and Powerless (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and M.A. Chen, Coping with Seasonality and Drought (New Delhi: Sage, 1991). Writers such as Longhurst have been concerned that such periods may act as a trap for the poor that perpetuates (or exacerbates) their poverty for the remainder of the year in the absence of fall-back options. See R. Longhurst, 'Agricultural production and food consumption: Some neglected linkages', Food and Nutrition, Vol 9, 1983, pp 2–5. 19. P. Payne and M. Lipton, How Third World Rural Households Adapt to Dietary Energy Stress: The Evidence and Issues (Washington, DC: International Food Policy and Research Institute, 1994). This discusses the adult 'infection-malnutrition syndrome', which correlates high-energy expenditure work with possible depleted food stores (especially seasonally). This can cause or result from illness, which further exacerbates the cycle. 20. R.D. Tribhuwan documents the Thakurs of this area believing that '[H]eat (fire) in the stomach boils food and converts it down into liquid form which later is turned into blood (strength)'. See R.D. Tribhuwan, Medical World of the Tribals. Explorations in Illness Ideology, Body Symbolism and Ritual Healing (New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 1998), p 294. However, Panga articulates a slightly different belief, more akin to Osella and Osella's documentation of some Keralites' believing that internal heat consumes and wastes food, which leads to thinness. See F. Osella and C. Osella, 'Articulation of physical and social bodies in Kerala', Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 30, No 1, 1996, p 49. 21. 'Learning to labour' is a phrase made famous in anthropology by the work of Paul Willis in the 1970s, who looked at the reproduction of working class culture among a group of English youth. See P. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977). 22. Breman, op cit, Ref 2, p 109. 23. M. Jackson, 'Knowledge of the body', Man, Vol 18, No 2, 1983, p 329. In her study of weavers in Ghana, E. Goody was surprised at the small part played by questioning and speaking in teaching apprentices. See E. Goody (ed) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 24. M. Bloch uses the example of learning to drive to illustrate this point as the mechanism of driving involves mastering a complex set of coordinated body movements that are not reducible to a linguistic form. See M. Bloch, 'Language, anthropology and cognitive science', Man, Vol 26, No 2, 1991, p 189. 25. M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge Classics, 2002, reprint ed). Bloch asserts anthropologists should recognise the contribution of cognitive science in understanding how everyday tasks are learned very gradually through imitation and tentative participation. See M. Bloch, How We Think They Think. Anthropological Approaches to Cognition (Colorado: Westview Press, 1998). 26. M. Mauss, 'Techniques of the body', Economy and Society, Vol 2, No 1, 1973, pp 70–88. These thoughts find a related idea in the cultural evolutionary field of 'memetics'. R. Dawkins suggests that aspects of our behaviour and knowledge are transmitted between individuals through imitation and other forms of social learning. 'Meme' is the name given to such 'units of culture' or instructions for behaviour embedded in human brains. Critics, however, describe memetics as little more than speculative evolutionary story-telling. See R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); D. Dennet, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (London: Penguin Books, 1995); and K.N. Laland and G.R. Brown, Sense and Nonsense. Evolutional Perspective on Human Behaviour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 27. The owner of one brickworks goes so far as to suggest that labourers' children are better off getting insufficient food while they are young so they become accustomed to the adult shortages that are 'bound' to follow. 28. M. Maclachlan also discusses the importance of 'training' of children for their adult roles. In his anthropological study of a South Indian village, he observes boys and girls beginning their training for their adult work before they are able to physically sustain it for the length of time the work will eventually take. Thus, '[T]heir daily routine becomes an open classroom for the holistic learning of their adult role'. See M. Maclachlan, Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural Adaptation in a South Indian Village (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983), p 181. 29. Writing of the Thakurs in the 1960s, L.N. Chapekar similarly acknowledges that abilities are not necessarily reflective of observable physique, 'Thanks to poor food, the Thakurs are not of very good physique. Yet they are well formed, show remarkable powers of endurance and are markedly active' (emphasis added). See L.N. Chapekar, Thakurs of the Sahyadri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1960), p 6. 30. Yasuo as cited in S. Carey, 'Cultivating ethos through the body', Human Studies, Vol 23, No 1, 2000, pp 23–42. Similarly, J.S. Alter discusses the embodied 'kinaesthetic grammar' or 'poetics of movement' involved in Indian wrestlers' search for equipoise in life through their training regimes. See J.S. Alter, 'The celibate wrestler: sexual chaos, embodied balance and competitive politics in north India', Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 29, Nos 1&2, 1995, pp 109–131. 31. Mauss, op cit, Ref 26, p 78. 32. For example, E.P. Thompson quotes a commentator during the eighteenth-century advocacy of work-houses for children in England, 'There is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours a day, whether they earn their living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them …' (emphasis added). See E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London: Merlin, 1991), p 387. 33. R. Melzack, 'Gate control theory: on the evolution of pain concepts', in L. Gifford (ed), Topical Issues in Pain 3 (Falmouth: CNS Press, 2002). 34. For example, Gulati and Gulati describe a lifetime female brickworker in Kerala as 'tall and holds herself upright in a manner that would indicate years of military training (in her case the training came from the need to maintain perfect balance for the bricks she carried on her head)'. See L. Gulati and M. Gulati, 'Female labour in the unorganised sector: the brickworker revisited', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 32, No 18, 1997, p 968. 35. K. Rodahl, The Physiology of Work (London: Taylor & Francis, 1989). 36. P. Dasgupta, An Inquiry into Well-being and Destitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 37. Bandhu is possibly referring to some remnants of an indigenous system of physical exercises amongst adivasi men in this locality called 'kodkis', which are described by Chapekar, op cit, Ref 29. 38. C. Panter-Brick, 'Issues of work intensity, work pace and work sustainability in relation to work content and nutritional status', American Journal of Human Biology, Vol 15, No 4, 2003, pp 498–513. This study mentions the role of motivation with regard to work productivity. R. Martorell and G. Arroyave also acknowledge the importance of motivation in working performances. See R. Martorell and G. Arroyave, 'Malnutrition, work output and energy needs', in K.J. Collins and D.F. Roberts (eds), Capacity for Work in the Tropics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp 57–75. 39. Labourers are 'attached' as they get an 'angavar gheve' (advance payment) before the labouring season beings. This lump sum of cash is then paid off by the labourer (and their family) through the season. 40. As found in Breman, op cit, Ref 2. 41. Similarly, at one of the brickworks the employer told us that the three families would actually compete with each other in productivity terms, which inevitably increases outputs. 42. Although not documented in the Indian context, labour historians of Southern Africa have chronicled how mine owners extensively sought to use alcohol to capture and control its workforce. See J. Crush and C. Ambler (eds), Liquor and Labour in Southern Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992). However, employers in this case study expressed no sentiments regarding the utility of alcohol-taking in terms of recruitment or retention of labourers. 43. N. Reissland and R. Burghart, 'The quality of a mother's milk and the health of her child: Belief and practices of the women of Mithila', Social Science and Medicine, Vol 27, 1986, pp 461–469. 44. S.B. Agnihotri, Sex Ratio Patterns in the Indian Population: A Fresh Exploration (New Delhi: Sage, 2000) draws on other evidence; see, for example, S. Klassen, 'Missing women reconsidered', World Development, Vol 22, No 7, 1994, pp 1061–1071. The latter study concludes that excess male mortality during infancy is attributed to the relative biological advantage enjoyed by female infants compared with male infants in a health neutral environment. However, this natural advantage is overturned past infancy when excess female mortality is attributed to resource allocation inequality in terms of girl children being given less food, being breastfed for smaller time spans and being allowed less health care. See also B. Harriss, 'Differential child mortality and health care in South Asia', Journal of Social Studies, Vol 44, 1989, pp 2–123; S. Kishor, 'May God give sons to all: gender and child mortality in India', American Sociological Review, Vol 58, No 2, 1993, pp 247–265; and H. Papanek, 'To each less than she needs, from each more than she can do: allocations, entitlements and value', in I. Tinker (ed), Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp 162–181. 45. This has also been documented by C. Bledsoe, Women and Marriage in Kpelle Society (San Fransisco, California: Stanford University Press, 1980). 46. Classic male explanations for there being no great female ascetics is that they cannot accumulate energy as men do through sexual abstinence due to losing their source of energy every month. See R. Burghart, 'The cultural context of diet, disease and the body', in G.A. Harrison and J.C. Waterlow (eds), op cit, Ref 16. 47. A. Lakhani, K. Gandhi and M. Collumbien, 'Addressing semen loss concerns: towards culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS interventions in Gujurat, India', Reproductive Health Matters, Vol 9, No 18, 2001, pp 49–59. 48. See J.W. Edwards, 'Semen anxiety in South Asian cultures: cultural and transcultural significance', Medical Anthropology, Vol 7, No 3, 1983, pp 51–67; M.S. Bhatia and S.C. Malik, 'Dhat syndrome: a useful diagnostic entity in Indian culture', British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 159, 1991, pp 691–695; and R.K. Chadda and N. Ahuja, 'Dhat syndrome: a sex neurosis of the Indian subcontinent', British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 156, 1990, pp 577–579. 49. Lakhani et al., op cit, Ref 47. 50. The popularity of Lord Hanuman in this locality is linked to this idea of abstinence from sex to enhance strength. Lord Hanuman was a bachelor and is seen as the God of strength. In local Marathi movies, men are seen to swear their devotion to Hanuman and promise not to marry so they will remain 'strong men'. In Hanuman temples there are often associated gymnasiums and wrestling clubs as these are seen to assist strength building. Older Sonav men would talk of the presence and popularity of such clubs in their youth, although they are not as common now for Maharashtrian youth. Alter writes that pahalwani (wrestling), '[C]entres on the importance of the body as a psychosomatic whole which needs to be built up and maintained in balance with the larger socio-political environment'; see S. Alter, 'Somatic nationalism: Indian wrestling and militant Hinduism', Modern Asian Studies, Vol 28, No 3, 1994, p 572. Wrestling ideology also believes in semen retention, as shakti (experienced as semen) is the essential force regarded to animate the wrestlers' body; thus wrestlers must be celibate. See Alter, ibid, pp 557–588. 51. L. McDowell, op cit, Ref 1.