Doctorial Dissertation Research: Understanding Transnational Labor Formations in the Indian Call Center Economy

在John Hartigan博士的监督下，研究生Mathangi Krishnamurthy将对印度的商业呼叫中心进行人种学研究，特别关注工人的高流动率。 自2000年初以来，美国企业越来越多地将其客户支持中心外包给印度，作为全球业务扩张和优化实践的一部分。 企业和政府的利益相关者将国际呼叫中心行业视为公司和发展中国家的先进经济解决方案。另一方面，印度和国际媒体批评这个新兴的服务业正在用受到虐待和文化疏远的印度年轻人偷偷取代西方的工人。通过探索印度呼叫中心的高劳动力流动率，本项目旨在了解印度呼叫中心工作人员如何描绘和生活在跨国呼叫中心经济的实践，表现和物质影响方面。民族志实地考察将在浦那进行，浦那是印度西部著名的大学城和呼叫中心。研究人员将在呼叫中心工作;她还将采访现任和前任员工，以及那些培训和监督他们的人。该研究将研究工人的经验，涉及：（1）呼叫中心内的劳动管理实践，（2）关于呼叫中心行业的有争议的国际和地方辩论，以及（3）伴随和框架城市呼叫中心经济发展的社会经济转型。该项目还将整合来自公共领域的内容，如报纸文章、纪录片、新闻简报和在线论坛，以将工人的经历融入围绕该行业的辩论中。研究方法是综合性的，并应用社会文化人类学，城市研究和关键的商业管理分析的方法和理论，以促进对全球资本流动的影响的知识。

Under the supervision of Dr. John Hartigan, graduate student Mathangi Krishnamurthy will carry out an ethnographic study of business call centers in India, with a particular focus on the high rates of worker turnover. Since early 2000, businesses in the United States increasingly have outsourced their customer support centers to India as part of global business expansion and optimization practices. Stakeholders in business and government view the international call center industry as an advanced economic solution for both corporations and developing nations. Indian and international media, on the other hand, criticize this emerging service sector as surreptitiously replacing workers in the west with maltreated and culturally alienated Indian youth. By exploring the high rate of labor turnover in Indian call centers, this project seeks to understand how Indian call center workers portray and live their own lives in relation to the practices, representations, and material effects of the transnational call center economy. Ethnographic fieldwork will be carried out in Pune, a prominent university town and call center hub in Western India. The researcher will work in a call center; she also will interview current and former workers, as well as those who train and supervise them. The research will examine workers' experiences in relation to 1) labor management practices within call centers, (2) contentious international and local debates on the call center industry, and (3) socio-economic transformations that accompany and frame the development of this urban call center economy. The project also will incorporate content from the public domain such as newspaper articles, documentaries, news presentations, and online forums to contextualize the experiences of workers within the debates surrounding the industry. The research approach is integrative and applies methods and theory from socio-cultural anthropology, urban studies, and critical business management analyses in order to contribute to knowledge on the ramifications of global capital movement.