Call for papers: proposed panel: Affective Labor in Neoliberal India, Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, October 17-20, 2013
Dear all,
I am looking for people to join a panel for the UW Madison Conference on South Asia. If you are interested in the relationship between affect and work in India, please consider joining me! I have included a preliminary abstract below along with my own research interests.
Please email me (elbridge [at] syr.edu) by March 22nd if you would like to participate. The conference in Madison will be held October 17-20, 2013.
The deadline for submissions is April 1st.
Please see their website for more details about the call for papers:
http://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/registration/startNEW.asp.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Affective Labor in Neoliberal India
As neoliberal policies become entrenched in India, the ways in which people engage in work has arguably shifted. More and more, people's affects are becoming central to how they must perform their work. In many sectors, interpersonal interactions are increasingly commodified as the experience becomes part of the product sold, leading to questions about the way in which people manage their emotions in the workplace (Hochschild 1982) and how affect may be insinuated into economic exchange (Hardt 1999). This panel will interrogate the concept of "affect" in order to elucidate the ways in and the extent to which the processes of economic liberalization and globalization have shaped the work experiences of Indians within the last 25 years.
Emera Bridger Wilson's paper will explores the role of emotion work in tourism. In Rajasthan, touristic interactions are a location of affect management. Rickshaw drivers working at Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan try to foster particular emotions in their clients as they themselves regulate their own affects in the course of their work. I am interested in looking at the ways in which this emotion work shapes their self-perceptions.
Emera Bridger Wilson
PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13324
(315) 744-0716
elbridge [at] syr.edu
[Cross-posted, with thanks from H-ASIA]