Criminal Capital explores the relationship between neoliberalism, criminality and the reshaping of class in modern India. It discusses how the political vocabularies of urban industrial workers reflect the processes by which power is distributed across the region. Based upon field research among a 'casualised' workforce in the industrial city of Jamshedpur, the book examines the links between the decline of employment security, and criminality in trade unions, corporations and the state.

The volume compares popular discourses of corruption against the ethnography of local labour politics, business enterprise and debt collection, and shows how corruption and criminality consolidate class power in industrial environments. Using an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach, this study interrogates the relationship between capitalism, corruption, violence and labour politics in contemporary Indian society.

An important intervention in the study of Indian political economy, this work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, social anthropology, economics, labour relations and criminology.

About the Author

Andrew Sanchez is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. After completing his PhD in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009, he was LSE Fellow from 2009 to 2012, and Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology from 2012 to 2014. His writings on class, labour and corruption have been published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Critique of Anthropology, Modern Asian Studies and a number of reports and edited volumes. He is currently conducting an ethnographic study of the Indian scrap metal trade.

Reviews

'Criminalisation of politics and corruption are by far the most discussed, but least understood, topics in India. Andrew Sanchez has achieved a remarkable analytical tour de force in this masterfully researched and sharply insightful study that convincingly alters the way in which we conceive of the role of crime and the meanings of corruption in India's contemporary capitalism and democracy.' - Nandini Gooptu, Associate Professor of South Asian Studies, University of Oxford

'Criminal Capital tells an Indian tale of global relevance - what happens when economic liberalisation encourages firms to focus on profit in an era of global competition. The result is workers with little hope of security, and unions, companies and politicians with little sense of obligation to anyone but themselves.' - James Carrier, Research Associate, Oxford Brookes University

'Class and labour are back in vogue. Andrew Sanchez's rich local ethnography of Jamshedpur, the quintessential company town around the Tata corporation, India, is shot through with global comparison and universalising insight. He shows how an ever more casualised local working class explains its condition with ideas of systemic corruption, and why those ideas make sense. A fantastic contribution to Indian labour ethnography as well as to global comparative class analysis.' - Don Kalb, Professor of Social Anthropology, Central European University

Book Information
ISBN 9781138921962
Author Andrew Sanchez
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Routledge India
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 385g