What's New about the 'New India'? Capital and Class after Liberalization

22nd Wertheim Lecture by Prof. Carol Upadhya

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), the Graduate School for Social Sciences (GSSS) and IIAS have the honour to invite you to the 22nd Wertheim Lecture by Prof. Carol Upadhya of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, India.

Honoring the legacy of Prof. Wim Wertheim, the founding father of Asian studies at UvA, the annual Wertheim Lecture is co-organized by the Moving Matters programme group of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), and the Graduate School for Social Sciences (GSSS) of the University of Amsterdam.

CAROL UPADHYA is professor at the School of Social Sciences of the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore.

Teaching Specialties: anthropology, ethnography, sociology of India
Area of Research: work and culture of Indian IT professionals in India and Europe; capitalism; politics of land, class and caste
Area of Fieldwork: Bangalore, Jharkhand, coastal Andhra Pradesh (India) and The Netherlands

Selected Publications
Upadhya, Carol and AR Vasavi (eds). 2008. In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India’s Information Technology Industry. New Delhi: Routledge.
Upadhya, Carol. 2010 “Taking the high road? Labour in the Indian software outsourcing India”. In Anne Posthuma and Dev Nathan (eds), Labour in Global Production Networks in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 300-320.
Upadhya, Carol. 2009. “Imagining India: Software and the ideology of liberalisation”. In South African Review of Sociology: Special issue on Sociology in India, 40(1), pp. 76-93.
Upadhya, Carol. 2009. “Controlling offshore knowledge workers: Power and agency in India’s software industry”. In New Technology, Work and Employment 24(1), pp. 2-18.

Registration
There are limited seats available and it is therefore necessary to register in advance via email address aissr@uva.nl or telephone +31 (0) 20 525 2262. 

Seminar
On Thursday the 6th of June (10.00 till 13.00), there will be an intensive seminar which will give PhD candidates at the AISSR the opportunity to discuss Upadhya’s work.

10.00-11.30: We will discuss two selected texts by Carol Upadhya, which you will read beforehand. The articles discuss "India’s new economy and the ‘new’ cosmopolitan middle class" on the basis of Upadhya’s ethnographic fieldwork in IT companies in Bangalore. The selected texts are:

-Upadhya, Carol. 2011. “Software and the ‘new’ middle class in the ‘New India’”. In Amita Baviskar and Raka Ray (ed), Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes. New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 167-192.

-Upadhya, Carol. Upcoming. "Shrink wrapped souls: Managing the self in India’s new economy.” In Nandini Gooptu (ed), Enterprise Culture in India. London: Routledge.

11.30-13.00: This is an opportunity for PhD students and post-docs to talk to Carol Upadhya about their research projects and to have a more general exchange. If you are interested to join this session, please send a short abstract in advance so that Carol Upadhya will be familiar with your work. During the meeting you will be asked to briefly introduce your research.

Please write an email to aissr@uva.nl if you are interested in participating. We will send you the texts in response.