Crises in the Midst of Welfare: State-Capital-Labor Relations in the Indian Apparel Industry

• In Event: Theorizing Capitalist Crisis & Middle-Class Politics

Abstract

How do geo-political, economic, and environmental crises reconfigure the balance of power among state, employers, and workers in highly industrialized regions in the global South, as articulated through multiple axes of social difference? My dissertation empirically grounds this inquiry in Tiruppur - India’s largest knitwear export hub with deep ties to American and European markets. Located in Western Tamil Nadu which is one of the most industrialized regions in India, Tiruppur’s industrial relations is marked by a hyper-flexible labor market that facilitates export-based production - but it is also mediated by a robust subnational welfare state, shaped by decades of competition between populist parties. This makes Tiruppur a unique site to explore how crises interact with developmental and welfare trajectories. The research combines ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews with workers, employers, and union leaders, and archival analysis of policy documents, trade and industry reports.

The project advances sociological theory by linking theoretical frameworks advanced by Polanyi, Gramsci, and Bourdieu on crisis and institutional change with contemporary analysis of labor and the restructuring of globalization. I conceptualize crises as multi-scalar and interlinked processes - simultaneously global, national, and local in their expression. Rather than viewing state-capital-labor relations as abstract categories, this project pays attention to how these political economic relations are refracted through social structures of class, caste, gender, and citizenship. In Tiruppur, these relations are mediated through Dalit workers at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, Muslim small traders, North Indian migrants who are engaged in circular migration and do not benefit from subnational welfare schemes, and Gounder industrialists whose caste networks dominate the economic and political apparatus in the region. By comparing how these groups navigate and respond to various crises, the study pays attention to how capitalist development and restructuring is constituted by and expressed by hierarchically organized social difference.

Author

• Aabid Firdausi, Johns Hopkins University