Economy and Society II: Factory and Labour, Gender and Work, Business and Family, Digital and Global Business, Tourism and Consumption
2. Gender and labour process; business and family
Feminist sociology showed that the labour process is gendered. Arlie Hochschild's The Managed Heart (1983), a study of flight attendants, introduced emotional labour — the management of one's own feelings to produce a required emotional display, sold as part of the job — and her The Second Shift (1989) documented employed women returning home to a second shift of housework and childcare. Maria Mies's The Lace Makers of Narsapur (1982) showed how women lace makers in Andhra Pradesh, working at home for exporters, were defined as 'housewives' whose work was mere leisure-time activity, which justified pitifully low pay — her concept of housewifisation. The 'feminisation of labour' describes both women's rising share in low-wage, flexible work and the spread of the insecure conditions historically imposed on women's work to men's. Unpaid care work, mostly done by women, remains outside national accounts, and India's female labour force participation has been among the lowest in the world.
Weber held that rational capitalism required the separation of household from enterprise. Indian evidence complicates this. Milton Singer's study of industrial leaders in Madras (When a Great Tradition Modernizes, 1972) found that the joint family did not obstruct entrepreneurship but was adapted to it, supplying capital, trust and managerial personnel, while businessmen compartmentalised ritual and modern work roles. Indian capitalism has long run through community networks — Marwaris (studied by Thomas Timberg, 1978), Chettiars, Parsis, Gujarati Banias, Sindhis — whose kinship, credit and reputation systems lowered transaction costs; Harish Damodaran's India's New Capitalists (2008) traced how castes from agrarian and other backgrounds entered business after liberalisation. Family firms still dominate much of Indian business, raising questions of succession and professional management.
3. Digital economy and e-commerce; global business and corporates
- Platform economy: digital platforms — for ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce and freelance work — match buyers and sellers and extract value from data and network effects (Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 2016). Gig workers are classified as independent 'partners' rather than employees, and are controlled by algorithmic management — ratings, automated assignment and deactivation. India's Code on Social Security (2020) was the first Indian labour law to define gig and platform workers.
- Surveillance capitalism: Shoshana Zuboff (2019) argues that digital firms claim human experience as free raw material, converting behavioural data into predictions sold in markets for future behaviour.
- Digital payments such as the Unified Payments Interface (2016) have drawn small traders and informal workers into formal digital circuits, while raising questions of exclusion for those without devices, literacy or connectivity.
- Global business and corporates: transnational corporations organise production through global commodity or value chains — Gary Gereffi distinguished producer-driven chains (automobiles, where manufacturers control the chain) from buyer-driven chains (garments, where retailers and brands control dispersed suppliers). India's IT and business-process outsourcing industry is a major node, studied by Carol Upadhya (Reengineering India, 2016). India's Companies Act, 2013 made it the first country to mandate corporate social responsibility spending (two per cent of average net profits for qualifying companies).
4. Tourism and consumption
Dean MacCannell's The Tourist (1976) read the tourist as a modern pilgrim in search of authenticity, and borrowed Goffman's front and back regions to describe 'staged authenticity' — back regions arranged for tourists to feel they have seen the real thing. John Urry's The Tourist Gaze (1990) argued that tourism is organised around socially structured ways of looking, shaped by media and the tourism industry, and distinguished the solitary 'romantic' gaze from the sociable 'collective' gaze. Valene Smith's Hosts and Guests (1977) opened the anthropology of tourism's effects on host communities — commodification of culture, but also revival of crafts and performance. Ecotourism, heritage tourism and pilgrimage tourism (taken up in Unit 10) are its growing forms in India.
| Theorist | Idea about consumption |
|---|---|
| Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899) | Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure display wealth and claim status |
| Georg Simmel ('Fashion', 1904) | Fashion combines imitation and distinction: elites adopt new styles to mark themselves off, and others imitate them — the 'trickle-down' pattern |
| Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction, 1979) | Taste is shaped by class habitus and cultural capital, and consumption reproduces class boundaries |
| Jean Baudrillard (The Consumer Society, 1970) | Objects are consumed for their sign value in a code of social differences, not simply for use |
| Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood (The World of Goods, 1979) | Goods are a communication system that makes cultural categories visible and stable |
Key takeaways
- Taylorism, Fordism, human relations and post-Fordism mark changing factory systems; Braverman's deskilling, Burawoy's manufactured consent and Blauner's inverted-U of alienation are the classic studies of the labour process.
- Keith Hart coined the informal sector; casualisation, contract labour and Standing's precariat describe the changing nature of labour relations.
- Hochschild's emotional labour and second shift, Mies's housewifisation and the feminisation of labour show the gendering of work; Singer found the joint family adapting to industrial enterprise.
- Platform capitalism, algorithmic management, surveillance capitalism and Gereffi's producer- and buyer-driven chains frame the digital and global economy; India mandates CSR under the Companies Act, 2013.
- MacCannell's staged authenticity and Urry's tourist gaze frame tourism; Veblen, Simmel, Bourdieu, Baudrillard and Douglas read consumption as communication and status.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital argued that under monopoly capitalism work tends towards:
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Answer: D — Deskilling and increased managerial control
Braverman, extending Marx and criticising Taylorism, argued that management systematically separates conception from execution, degrading skill so as to control the labour process.Robert Blauner found that the relationship between technology and alienation takes the form of:
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Answer: D — An inverted U — low in craft work, highest on the assembly line, lower in continuous-process industry
Comparing printing, textiles, automobiles and chemicals in Alienation and Freedom (1964), Blauner found alienation peaked with assembly-line work and declined with automated continuous-process production.The term 'emotional labour' was introduced by:
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Answer: D — Arlie Hochschild
Hochschild's The Managed Heart (1983), based on flight attendants and bill collectors, defined emotional labour as managing feelings to create a publicly observable display for a wage.Maria Mies's study of lace makers in Narsapur led to which concept?
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Answer: C — Housewifisation
Mies argued that defining home-based women workers as housewives whose work is leisure activity made their labour invisible and justified extremely low piece rates paid by exporters.Which of the following statements about the informal sector and labour relations are correct? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Keith Hart coined the term 'informal sector' from research in Ghana; C — The majority of India's workforce is informally employed; D — Contract labour can exist inside formal enterprises
The statements about Hart, the informal majority and contract labour are correct. Standing's precariat is defined by insecurity of employment, income and occupational identity — the opposite of secure public-sector work.Assertion (A): Milton Singer argued that the joint family was compatible with industrial entrepreneurship in Madras. Reason (R): He found that the joint family adapted by supplying capital, trust and managerial personnel to family firms. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Singer's evidence (R) is the basis of his conclusion (A), which challenged the Weberian expectation that traditional family and caste structures would block rational capitalism in India.In Gereffi's analysis of global commodity chains, the garment industry, where retailers and brand-name companies control dispersed networks of suppliers, is an example of:
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Answer: B — A buyer-driven chain
Buyer-driven chains are coordinated by large retailers and brands that design and market but do not manufacture; producer-driven chains, as in automobiles, are controlled by manufacturers.Which two-word term did Thorstein Veblen use for spending on goods and services mainly to display wealth and social status?
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: conspicuous consumption
In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Veblen described conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure as the means by which the leisure class displays pecuniary strength and claims honour.Dean MacCannell's concept of 'staged authenticity' adapts which earlier sociological idea?
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Answer: D — Goffman's front and back regions
MacCannell argued that tourists seek back regions — the real life behind the performance — and that the tourism industry stages such back regions for them, extending Goffman's dramaturgy.Which pairing of theorist and idea is NOT correct?
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Answer: A — Piore and Sabel — the Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect comes from Elton Mayo's human-relations studies; Piore and Sabel are associated with flexible specialisation in The Second Industrial Divide (1984).