{"title":"Hegemonic developments: the new Indian middle class, gendered subalterns, and diasporic returnees in the event of neoliberalism.","authors":"Amy Bhatt, Madhavi Murty, Priti Ramamurthy","doi":"10.1086/652916","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The \"new middle class\" as a political construct is valuable for feminist theorizations of international political economy, particularly those concerned with development. The rise of the new middle class is usually juxtaposed with neoliberalism, so we offer a new theorization of neoliberalism-as-event and analyze an array of new-middle-class signs and subjects in India. Questioning the repetition of the figure of the new Indian woman in resolving the sociotemporal and spatiotemporal paradoxes of the nation, we argue, first, that the figure of the subaltern woman is a necessary counter to the new Indian woman. The arrival of the gendered subaltern on the national stage is celebrated through discourses that articulate and disarticulate the subaltern woman and bear the traces of subaltern struggles. Her gendered body constitutes the line between who can be new middle class and at the vanguard of neoliberal development and who cannot. Second, we argue that new-middle-class formation is taking place in the households of diasporic returnees through class practices that involve speaking to and for domestic servants. Returnees hold in tension urges to encourage class mobility and to discipline their servants through neoliberal governmentalities that draw on global discourses of corporate responsibility, professionalism, and empowerment. These development scripts are interspersed with reflections on the poor material conditions of domestic service work. The implications of this article for feminist theorizations of international political economy are methodological, analytical, and political.</p>","PeriodicalId":51382,"journal":{"name":"Signs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/652916","citationCount":"34","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Signs","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/652916","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"WOMENS STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 34
Abstract
The "new middle class" as a political construct is valuable for feminist theorizations of international political economy, particularly those concerned with development. The rise of the new middle class is usually juxtaposed with neoliberalism, so we offer a new theorization of neoliberalism-as-event and analyze an array of new-middle-class signs and subjects in India. Questioning the repetition of the figure of the new Indian woman in resolving the sociotemporal and spatiotemporal paradoxes of the nation, we argue, first, that the figure of the subaltern woman is a necessary counter to the new Indian woman. The arrival of the gendered subaltern on the national stage is celebrated through discourses that articulate and disarticulate the subaltern woman and bear the traces of subaltern struggles. Her gendered body constitutes the line between who can be new middle class and at the vanguard of neoliberal development and who cannot. Second, we argue that new-middle-class formation is taking place in the households of diasporic returnees through class practices that involve speaking to and for domestic servants. Returnees hold in tension urges to encourage class mobility and to discipline their servants through neoliberal governmentalities that draw on global discourses of corporate responsibility, professionalism, and empowerment. These development scripts are interspersed with reflections on the poor material conditions of domestic service work. The implications of this article for feminist theorizations of international political economy are methodological, analytical, and political.
期刊介绍:
Recognized as the leading international journal in women"s studies, Signs has since 1975 been at the forefront of new directions in feminist scholarship. Signs publishes pathbreaking articles of interdisciplinary interest addressing gender, race, culture, class, nation, and/or sexuality either as central focuses or as constitutive analytics; symposia engaging comparative, interdisciplinary perspectives from around the globe to analyze concepts and topics of import to feminist scholarship; retrospectives that track the growth and development of feminist scholarship, note transformations in key concepts and methodologies, and construct genealogies of feminist inquiry; and new directions essays, which provide an overview of the main themes, controversies.