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Global "Body Shopping" : An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry / Biao Xiang.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: In-FormationPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2007Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (208 p.) : 9 halftones. 3 line illus. 1 table. 1 mapContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691118529
  • 9781400836338
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 331.12/7910954 331.1279
LOC classification:
  • HD8039.D372 I48 2007
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations, Tables, Boxes -- Acronyms -- Prologue: A Stranger's Adventure -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. The Global Niche for Body Shopping -- Chapter 2. Producing "IT People" in Andhra -- Chapter 3. Selling "Bodies" and Selling Jobs -- Chapter 4. Business of "Branded Labor" in Sydney -- Chapter 5. Agent Chains and Benching -- Chapter 6. Compliant Bodies? -- Chapter 7. The World System of Body Shopping -- Ending Remarks. The "Indian Triangle" in the Global IT Industry -- Appendix Essay. The Remembered Fieldwork Sites: Impressions and Images -- Biographical Index of Informants -- Notes -- References -- Index -- Backmatter
Summary: How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system--a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions. Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as "body shopping." In this practice, a group of consultants--body shops--in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project's completion they either place the workers with a different client or "bench" them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement. Underpinning this practice are unequal socioeconomic relations on multiple levels. While wealth in the New Economy is created in an increasingly abstract manner, everyday realities--stock markets in New York, benched IT workers in Sydney, dowries in Hyderabad, and women and children in Indian villages--sustain this flexibility.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400836338

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations, Tables, Boxes -- Acronyms -- Prologue: A Stranger's Adventure -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. The Global Niche for Body Shopping -- Chapter 2. Producing "IT People" in Andhra -- Chapter 3. Selling "Bodies" and Selling Jobs -- Chapter 4. Business of "Branded Labor" in Sydney -- Chapter 5. Agent Chains and Benching -- Chapter 6. Compliant Bodies? -- Chapter 7. The World System of Body Shopping -- Ending Remarks. The "Indian Triangle" in the Global IT Industry -- Appendix Essay. The Remembered Fieldwork Sites: Impressions and Images -- Biographical Index of Informants -- Notes -- References -- Index -- Backmatter

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system--a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions. Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as "body shopping." In this practice, a group of consultants--body shops--in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project's completion they either place the workers with a different client or "bench" them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement. Underpinning this practice are unequal socioeconomic relations on multiple levels. While wealth in the New Economy is created in an increasingly abstract manner, everyday realities--stock markets in New York, benched IT workers in Sydney, dowries in Hyderabad, and women and children in Indian villages--sustain this flexibility.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jul 2021)