testing the future: gender and technocapitalism in start-up India

In this article I examine how start-up capitalism recalibrates transnational ‘outsourcing’ or the work of so-called ‘cyber coolies’ to instead create labour as a site of innovation and experimental consumption. First, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in India to theorise digital labour as a form of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Feminist review 2019-11, Vol.123 (123), p.74-88
Main Author: Gupta, Hemangini
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automation
Capitalism
Consumption
Employees
Employment
Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship
Ethnography
Experiments
Field study
Fieldwork
Gender
Informal economy
Innovations
Insecure
Knowledge economy
Labor
Mediation
Middle class
Outsourcing
Postcolonialism
Startups
Technology
Transnationalism
Women
Work
Workers
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Summary:In this article I examine how start-up capitalism recalibrates transnational ‘outsourcing’ or the work of so-called ‘cyber coolies’ to instead create labour as a site of innovation and experimental consumption. First, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in India to theorise digital labour as a form of experimental mediation and temporal work oriented to the future. Second, I show how work is deeply embodied and centres on the racialised and gendered bodies of non-elite workers. Finally, I show how invitations to innovate with work processes encourage workers to cultivate attachments of love and care for the company that ultimately privatise affect and conceal class and labour hierarchies. Tracing employees’ experiences through a period of automation and layoffs, this article argues for an understanding of how precarious feminised work creates the conditions of possibility for postcolonial and transnational technocapitalism to flourish.
ISSN:0141-7789
1466-4380
DOI:10.1177/0141778919879740