Global "Body Shopping": An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry

by Xiang Biao

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.

Genres: Anthropology, Ethnography, School, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2006

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. The book is not just a detailed description of the micro to the macro to the global of the development of an Indian labor force of technology workers. The book is also the story of the anthropologist, Xiang Biao, an Oxford anthropology student, who lives with the Indians as they make their way through the network of tech schools in the the south of India, to the recruiting outfits in Australia. The goal is to get a job on a project in the United States. An interesting outcome of this system is that the recruiting of bodies for projects becomes more lucrative than the technical expertise required for the projects. The book is short and well written.

[Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting empirical and ethnographic analysis of "body-shopping" practices in regards to the increasingly globalized, transnational Indian IT economy. The connections between fostered social relations and the abstraction/financialization of capital, alongside an analysis of the international division of labor, were quite illuminating. However, the normative critiques -- and especially the forms of systemic exploitation and coercion -- accompanying this system were lacking (essentially reserved for a 5 page epilogue). Further explication regarding the gender, racial, and class inequalities embedded in the IT industry would behoove the work the Xiang is trying to achieve.

[thinkingape · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best. Solid work. Shocked by the close tie between NRI(non-resident Indian) and the dowry they command.

[Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

《全球“猎身”》（中）项飚。

[繁邦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting ethnography about Indian IT workers overseas.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read it for my anthro class. While an interesting topic I did not know about, the book was kinda bland.

[Yida · Rating 4 out of 5]

the proface is even better than the body itself

[Justin Xing · Rating 4 out of 5]

非传统民族志写法的人类学论文。民族/个人/全球的相互交错下，印度的种姓阶级性别不平等，使得社会剩余价值集中到一小部分精英阶级，因此造就了“印度IT”。

种姓阶级性别问题没有展开讲，也并不是这本书的重点。对于本身不太了解印度风物志的读者来说，是一本不错的”由点及面”的书。

[Abby W · Rating 4 out of 5]

读了好久，序言和结语部分写得坦诚有温度。最感兴趣的部分是：在与劳力行不合理的合同中，IT工人为什么会顺从？一方面是信息差，另一方面也是受限于贫瘠的关系网络与印度教影响下的“以和为贵”。即使知道不合理，对他们来说也无从选择，只好认命，这种“逆来顺受”让我想到了我们一部分的中国人。