A Postcolonial reading of a diverse craft economy
A Postcolonial reading of a diverse craft economy
This essay brings together J. K. Gibson-Graham’s diverse-economies framework and Kalyan Sanyal’s postcolonial capitalist development to unpack the heterogeneous economic processes of clay idol making practice in the Kumartuli neighborhood of Kolkata, India. This craft is rapidly getting transformed through state sanctions and corporate funding. Consequently, scholars have identified this encounter as this craftwork’s exposure to and absorption within capitalism. This essay unconventionally reads the differences within Kumartuli’s seemingly capitalist modes of production to make legible the absence of alternative discourses, thereby teasing out regimes of enterprises, coexisting class processes, and noncapitalist labor relations within a wage-labor setup. The paper examines the financial sector's sponsorship and the postcolonial state's development-driven governmentality, yet at the same time, identifies how they do not fully enroll the sector within capitalist production logic. Craft workers’ and women owner-artisans’ mundane counterhegemonic politics, which claims socio-economic justice, is seen as disrupting the processes of the accumulation economy.
Craft, Development, Diverse Economy, Labor, Postcolonialism
88-107
Mukhopadhyay, Rishika
2e6ce8c9-7ffe-48c4-a5d9-a393c5d2e49e
22 March 2023
Mukhopadhyay, Rishika
2e6ce8c9-7ffe-48c4-a5d9-a393c5d2e49e
Abstract
This essay brings together J. K. Gibson-Graham’s diverse-economies framework and Kalyan Sanyal’s postcolonial capitalist development to unpack the heterogeneous economic processes of clay idol making practice in the Kumartuli neighborhood of Kolkata, India. This craft is rapidly getting transformed through state sanctions and corporate funding. Consequently, scholars have identified this encounter as this craftwork’s exposure to and absorption within capitalism. This essay unconventionally reads the differences within Kumartuli’s seemingly capitalist modes of production to make legible the absence of alternative discourses, thereby teasing out regimes of enterprises, coexisting class processes, and noncapitalist labor relations within a wage-labor setup. The paper examines the financial sector's sponsorship and the postcolonial state's development-driven governmentality, yet at the same time, identifies how they do not fully enroll the sector within capitalist production logic. Craft workers’ and women owner-artisans’ mundane counterhegemonic politics, which claims socio-economic justice, is seen as disrupting the processes of the accumulation economy.
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A Postcolonial Reading of a Diverse Craft Economy
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e-pub ahead of print date: 22 March 2023
Published date: 22 March 2023
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Funding Information:
This research was funded by the University of Exeter’s International Excellence Scholarship grant as part of my Ph.D. thesis. I thank professor Priya Sangameswaran from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) for giving valuable feedback on an earlier draft.
Funding Information:
This research was funded by the University of Exeter’s International Excellence Scholarship grant as part of my Ph.D. thesis. I thank professor Priya Sangameswaran from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) for giving valuable feedback on an earlier draft.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords:
Craft, Development, Diverse Economy, Labor, Postcolonialism
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Local EPrints ID: 476325
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/476325
PURE UUID: 4b16922e-43ce-4a4b-8b16-5294f5435008
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Date deposited: 19 Apr 2023 16:41
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:15
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Author:
Rishika Mukhopadhyay
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