Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2015

Abstract

India’s global success in the Information Technology industry has also prompted the growth of neoliberalism and the re-emergence of the middle class in contemporary urban areas, such as Bangalore. BITS of Belonging shows that this economic shift produces new forms of social inequality while reinforcing older ones. The study investigates this economic disparity by looking at IT and water privatization to explain how these otherwise unrelated domains correspond to our thinking about citizenship, governance, and belonging.

The ethnographic study in this book shows how work and human processes in the IT industry intertwine to meet the market stipulations of the global economy. Meanwhile, in the recasting of water from a public good to a commodity, the middle class insists on a governance and citizenship model based upon market participation. This book provides a critical analysis of the grassroots activism involved in a contested water project where different classes lay their divergent claims to the city.

ISBN/ISSN

9781439912584

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

The document available for download is the book's introduction, provided by permission of the publisher. To order the book, see the publisher's website.

Publisher

Temple University Press

Place of Publication

Philadelphia, PA


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