Tongue, tape, and time: caring masculinities in the practice of electrical repair and maintenance work in India's Sundarbans

Abstract

In forest-fringe areas of India's Sundarbans, young men at the intersection of low caste and class become invested in electrical repair and maintenance work – as a gendering practice that enacts a specific logic of care. This work takes embodied knowledge (tongue), thoughtful improvisation (tape), and lifelong commitment (time) to fragile things and people in need. Tongue, tape, and time make the difference between good and bad care – between good, honourable men and men who do not or cannot care. In a place of changing aspirations but lasting deprivations, the costs of caring are expensive for men of limited means, and yet the costs of not caring cause the same men to suffer from unanticipated forms of gendered vulnerability. In this article, electrical workers’ caring masculinities are analysed in their political, economic, and moral dimensions to reveal ongoing tensions in the social constitution of (gendered) personhood: as care both obviates and causes ruination, these tensions must be constantly smoothed out for care to maintain its generative potential. Informed by fifteen months of fieldwork on an island of India's Sundarbans, the article seeks to trouble repair and maintenance work as care work – for care both does and undoes both men and things.