Labour, State and Society in Rural India: A Class‐Relational Approach, by Jonathan Pattenden. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016, 216 pp., ISBN: 978‐0‐7190‐8914‐5, £75.00, hardback.
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12226 |
Book Reviews 217
That migrants are not just victims but are capable of exercising agency and of
combating their own oppression is graphically demonstrated in Gordon’s chapter,
where she case studies the ways in which migrants and their organizations have
combatted exploitativerecruitment practices, showing that, where migrantsare seen as
key actors, ratherthan just recipients of services, they can eectively challenge abuses.
This book is a welcome socio-legal study which allows immigration policies to be
observed from dierent perspectives. Hopefully it will encourage more discussion and
socio-legal analysis around the issue of temporary migration, fromthe perspective of
the overall interests that it serves and the consequences for those who have no other
route to migration.
SONIA MCKAY
Visiting Professor of EuropeanSocio-Legal Studies at the Universities of Greenwich
and the West of England
Labour, State and Society in Rural India: A Class-Relational Approach,by
Jonathan Pattenden. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016, 216 pp.,
ISBN: 978-0-7190-8914-5, £75.00, hardback.
Conceptualizing labour that is increasinglysegmented and fragmented across multiple
sites constitutes one of the key challenges facing industrial/employment relations, as
is the analysis of the limits and possibilities this creates for labour organization and
action. A related issue concerns the relationship between labour struggles and the
state and civil society, that is, to what extent do labour struggles focus on accessing
state resources and citizenship rights or directly challenge capital? This book engages
with all three challenges. Coming froma long-standing tradition of studies of political
economy of change in rural India, it applies a class-relational approach to processes
of development in the South Indian state of Karnataka on three interrelated areas:
labour relations,collective action and the mediation of class relations by the state and
civil society. It examines changing forms of exploitation and domination at multiple
levels and assesses its implications for pro-labouring-class change through extensive
fieldwork conducted over12 years in 39 villages in 3 districts.
The book critiques the ‘residual’ and ‘semi-relational’approaches of Weber,Sen and
those inspired by Bourdieu for their focuson eects rather than causes of poverty and
inequality.It argues for an analysis of class relations between and among the classes of
labour and the dominant classes,and its mediation by the institutions of state and civil
society,to understand the material and socio-political conditions of labour (chapter 2).
The approach understands class as a social relation inflected with other inequalities
of gender and caste, and is sensitive to the diversity, complexity and unevenness of
social reality and change.It builds on ‘classes of labour’ that ‘capture the segmentation
of labour across multiple sites of production while underlining their shared position
as members of the exploited classes and maintaining focus on the core antagonism
between capital and labour’ (p. 23). Dominant classes include the capitalist class and
the dominant castes.
There is rich material on how labourrelations vary across villages, between the city
and the countryside and over time depending on forms of accumulation (agriculture,
agribusiness, formal employment or state poverty reduction programmes) and the
way labour is integrated (as agricultural labour, commuters to nearby cities or as
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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