Spaces of Exception
Spaces of Exception
Violence, Technology, and the Transgressive Gendered Body in India’s Global Call Centers
This chapter examines how the neoliberal economy permeates into everyday practices of local lives, enabled by the support of local infrastructures. As India defines its place in the global economy as the high-tech solution center for business operations, new forms of work and work environments have emerged in the communication and information-technology sectors. The media in the United States and India glamorize these jobs and depict the employees as enjoying their fiber-optic journey into a new identity. Indeed, a popular thread of reportage claims that call-center jobs have liberated Indian youth and turned them into avid consumers, thereby providing a necessary push to the traditionalism of Indian society, especially with regard to women. However, the ways in which gender issues are set into motion by globalization are far more complex. The chapter thus assesses how new media technologies are reorganizing labor practices and everyday life for women in India.
Keywords: neoliberal economy, call-center jobs, Indian youth, traditionalism, Indian society, globalization, new media technology, Indian women
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