Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T02:33:11.451Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Provincializing Capital: The Work of an Agrarian Past in South Indian Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2005

Sharad Chari
Affiliation:
Geography, London School of Economics, and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Extract

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Tiruppur town in Tamilnadu state became India's centerpiece in the export of cotton knitted garments. Between 1986 and 1997, Tiruppur's export earnings skyrocketed from $25 million to $636 million, the number of garments exported increased more than nine-fold, and Tiruppur shifted from basic T-shirts to diversified multi-product exports of fashion garments. This industrial boom has been organized through networks of small firms integrated through intricate subcontracting arrangements controlled by local capital of the Gounder caste from modest agrarian and working-class origins. In effect the whole town works like a decentralized factory for the global economy, but with local capital of peasant-worker origins at the helm. What is more, these self-made men hinge their retrospective narratives of class mobility and industrial success on their propensity to ‘toil’: the word ulaippu is distinct from the conventional Tamil word for work. How did Gounder peasant-workers remake the dynamics of work through their toil, to make Tiruppur a powerhouse of global production?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2004 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ayyar Krishnaswami 1933 Statistical Appendix and Supplement to the Revised District Manual (1898) for Coimbatore District A. R. Cox Madras Government Press
Bairoch Paul 1988 Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present Chicago University of Chicago Press
Baker Christopher John 1984 An Indian Rural Economy, 1880–1955: The Tamilnadu Countryside Oxford Clarendon Press
Byres Terence J. 1991 “The Agrarian Question and Differing Forms of Capitalist Agrarian Transition: An Essay with Reference to Asia” Jan Breman and Sudipto Mundle Rural Transformation in Asia Delhi Oxford University Press
Cawthorne Pamela 1990 “Amoebic Capitalism as a Form of Accumulation: The Case of the Cotton Knitwear Industry in a South Indian Town” Ph.D. dissertation Milton Keynes U.K. The Open University
Cederlöf Gunnel 1997 Bonds Lost: Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India, c.1900–1970 New Delhi Manohar Books
Chakrabarty Dipesh 2000 Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography Nepantla: Views from South 1 1 9 32Google Scholar
Chari Sharad 1998 “The Agrarian Question and Industrialization in Tiruppur, South India: A Historical Geography of the Industrial Present” M. Goodman and M. Watts Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, 79–105 New York Routledge
Chari Sharad 2000 The Agrarian Origins of the Knitwear Industrial Cluster in Tirupur, India World Development 28 3 (Mar.) 579–99Google Scholar
Chari Sharad 2004 Fraternal Capital: Peasant-Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in Provincial India Palo Alto, Calif. New Delhi Stanford University Press Permanent Black
Cooper Frederick 1997 Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans and the Development Concept F. Cooper and Randall Packard International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge Berkeley University of California Press 64 92
Dirks Nicholas 1996 “Recasting Tamil Society: The Politics of Caste and Race in Contemporary Southern India” C. J. Fuller Caste Today Delhi Oxford University Press
Dirks Nicholas 2001 Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India Princeton Princeton University Press
Durairaj [pseudonym] 1996 Pórátta Kálattil Banian Tolilali [The Banian worker in a field of struggle, Tamil] Unpublished tract by member of CITU labor union Tiruppur
Ganesamurthy N 1935 Economic Survey of a South Indian Village—Perumanallur Madras Agricultural Journal 23 7 (July) 269–80Google Scholar
Gopalaratnam P 1931 Rural Studies—Madathupalayam Village, Coimbatore District Madras Agricultural Journal 19 12 (Dec.) 522–29Google Scholar
Government of India 1927 Evidence Taken in the Madras Presidency Vol. III Royal Commission on Agriculture in India India His Majesty's Stationary Office
Graeber David 2001 Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dream New York Palgrave
Guha Ranajit 1963 A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement Paris Mouton
Harriss-White Barbara 1995 A Political Economy of Agricultural Markets in South India: Masters of the Countryside New Delhi Sage Publications
Hart Gillian 1986 Interlocking Transactions: Obstacles, Precursors or Instruments of Agrarian Capitalism? Journal of Development Economics 23 177 203Google Scholar
Heller Patrick 1999 The Labors of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell University Press
Kannan K. P. 1988 Of Rural Proletarian Struggles: Mobilization and Organization of Rural Workers in South-West India Delhi Oxford University Press
Lemon Alaina 2000 Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism Durham, N.C. Duke University Press
Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) 1988 Tamilnad Economy: Performance and Issues New Delhi Oxford and India Book House Pub. Co
Manthagani B 1983 “The History of Hosiery Industries at Tiruppur.” M. Phil. Thesis Coimbatore, India Bharathiyar University
Neelakantan 1996 “Change and Continuity—A Contrasting Account of Urban and Rural Transformation.” Working Paper No. 139 Chennai Madras Institute of Development Studies
Nicholson F. A. 1887 Manual of the Coimbatore District in the Presidency of Madras Madras Government Press
Roseberry William 1989 Agrarian Questions and Functionalist Economism in Latin America Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History and Political Economy Rutgers Rutgers University Press
Rukmini R 1993 “The Process of Urbanisation and Socioeconomic Change in Tamilnadu, 1901–81.” Ph.D. dissertation University of Madras
Srivastava Ravi 1995 “India's Uneven Development and Its Implications for Political Processes: An Analysis of Some Recent Trends.” T. V. Sathyamurthy Industry and Agriculture in India Since Independence Delhi Oxford University Press 219–47
Stoler Ann 1995 Prefacing Capitalism and Confrontation in 1995 Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870–1979 2d ed. Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press
Tyabji Nasir 1989 The Small Industries Policy in India Calcutta Oxford University Press
Watts Michael 1992 “Living under Contract: Work, Production Politics and the Manufacture of Discontent in a Peasant Society.” M. Watts and Allan Pred Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent New York Rutgers
Williams Raymond 1977 Marxism and Literature Oxford Oxford University Press
Zacharias C.W.B 1950 Madras Agriculture Madras University of Madras, G. S. Press