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
Copyright
Copyright © 2015, Temple University. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Publisher
Temple University Press
Place of Publication
Philadelphia, PA
eCommons Citation
Dasgupta, Simanti, "BITS of Belonging:Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India" (2015). Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications. 47.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/soc_fac_pub/47
Included in
Anthropology Commons, Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons
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.