Professional identities and servile realities: Aspirational labour in Delhi malls

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-223
Author(s):  
Keya Bardalai
Keyword(s):  
Service Sector ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Retail Store ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
New Class ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Mobility Strategies ◽  
Retail Workers

The article explores how retail workers envision and pursue aspirations for social mobility through employment in Delhi malls. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, this study examines how retail store employees cultivate professional occupational identities as a way of distancing themselves from informal and manual workers and claim a new class identity. The article also shows how workers come to view the job as dhoka (deceit), once they experience humiliation and disrespect at the hands of customers and managers and realise that such employment does not allow them to transcend their social class positions. However, they continue to stay on in these demeaning jobs because they believe that employment in the new service economy is their best option. By exploring retail workers’ narratives of majboori (constraint or compulsion) in this context, the article unpacks their contradictory experiences of work in the service sector and sheds light on youth aspirations and mobility strategies in post-liberalised India.

“How Will You Give Back?”: On Becoming a Compañera as a Feminist Methodology from the Cracks

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110216
Author(s):  
Firuzeh Shokooh Valle
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Feminist Methodology ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Power Inequality ◽  
Depth Interviews

Issues of power, inequality, and representation in the production of knowledge have a long history in transnational feminist research. And yet the unequal relationship between ethnographers and participants continues to haunt feminist research. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with the cooperative Sulá Batsú in Costa Rica between 2015 and 2019, in this essay I argue that centering solidarity and working through discomfort creates relationships that can reinvent and endure the persistent imbalance of power between researcher and participant. I conceptualize a solidarity-based methodology that is uncomfortable, tossing between "us and them," the objective and the subjective, akin to Gloria Anzaldúa’s “nepantla,” a liminal space of both fragmentation and unification, of both anguish and healing: a methodology from the cracks. In this essay, I reflect upon my experiences as a Puerto Rican feminist researcher focusing on Sulá Batsú, specifically on my relationship with the coop’s general coordinator. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the coop, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis of their research, briefs, blog posts, presentations, and promotional literature.

An interprofessional perspective on healthcare work: physicians and nurses co-constructing identities and spaces of action

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Erika Lokatt ◽  
Charlotte Holgersson ◽  
Monica Lindgren ◽  
Johann Packendorff ◽  
Louise Hagander
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
Healthcare Operations ◽  
Negotiated Order ◽  
Interprofessional Teamwork ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Healthcare Work

Abstract In this article we develop a theoretical perspective of how professional identities in multi-professional organisational settings are co-constructed in daily interactions. The research reported here is located in a healthcare context where overlapping knowledge bases, unclear divisions of responsibilities, and an increased managerialist emphasis on teamwork make interprofessional boundaries in healthcare operations more complex and blurred than ever. We thereby build on a research tradition that recognises the healthcare sector as a negotiated order, specifically studying how professional identities are invoked, constructed, and re-constructed in everyday work interactions. The perspective is employed in an analysis of qualitative data from interviews and participant observation at a large Swedish hospital, in which we find three main processes in the construction of space of action: hierarchical, inclusive, and pseudo-inclusive. In most of the interactions, existing inter-professional divides and power relations are sustained, preventing developments towards integrated interprofessional teamwork.

NAČELO PRILAGOĐENOSTI USLUGE I PRAVO NA SLOBODAN IZBOR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Janković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
The Right

The first step of a positive change in the system of service-legal relations is a change of view on the role and importance of service users. By providing opportunity to the service user to be an active and important member of the service-legal relationship, a far-reaching and universal value of humanization of the service economy sector is achieved. In such circumstances, the moral authority of the service law is realized through its justice and through voluntary obedience to the law of the subjects of the service-legal relationship. Precisely, this moral dimension of the rule of law, in the service economy sector is realized by applying the principles of service suitability and the right to free choice. In this regard, the paper analyzes the moral dimension and culture of the rule of law in the service sector, based on the principle of service suitability and the right to free choice, which are presented in the paper as guardians of justice of the service-legal norm.

scholarly journals Pomiędzy miłością agapiczną a erozyczną. Praktyki miłości i związków intymnych wśród indyjskiej miejskiej klasy średniej

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Anna Romanowicz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Heterosexual Relationships ◽  
Arranged Marriages ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork

Arranged marriages are the most common (and perceived as traditional) form of formalized heterosexual relationships in India. However, interest in relationships based on romantic love – especially among urban middle class –is increasing. The goal of the article is to present various practices related to romantic love, which cannot be inscribed in a rigid division for arranged and love marriages; to present everyday strategies and tactics, as they are being practiced by my research participants in context of sociocultural changes. The article is based on information gathered in ethnographic fieldwork (with a technique of participant observation) in Delhi.

scholarly journals STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT OF RESTAURANT BUSINESS VINNYTSIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
Uliya STAVSKA
Keyword(s):  
Service Sector ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Territorial Development ◽  
Strategic Development ◽  
Project Approach ◽  
Local Budget ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Combined Strategy ◽  
The City

The article provides an essential description of the concept of «service economy», defines its difference from the «industrial economy». Approaches to the definition of the term «restaurant business» are considered. Taking into account the specifics of the restaurant business, it is proposed to use the concept of «service landscape», which provides comfort of the institution, convenience of its location, perfection of interior, quality of service, implementation and use of innovative technologies of restaurant business. During the study, the algorithm and methodological basis for choosing a strategy for the development of the service economy sector of the region - restaurant business, based on identifying its prospects and attractiveness and allow on a systematic basis to link the prerequisites and conditions of enterprise development with restaurant product differentiation. As a result of the morphological analysis, the restaurants of the city of Vinnytsia were identified by the type of competitive behavior. This allowed to develop a combined strategy for the development of the city's restaurant business, which is based on the formation of compatibility of key market competencies with the core competencies of the restaurant business. The study the consequences of the strategy for the development of the restaurant business in Vinnytsia, which will improve the tourist infrastructure of the city, increase the number of employees in the service sector and, accordingly, tax revenues to the local budget, as well as improve cultural leisure opportunities for residents and guests. The combination of realization of the project-target approach of development of restaurant business with program-target methods of management of territorial development is substantiated. Projects for the development of the restaurant business have been developed in two directions: projects for the differentiation of the restaurant product and projects for strengthening the service landscape, focused on the development of a culture of restaurant service and innovative ways of serving customers. It is established that the implementation of the developed combined strategy for the development of the restaurant business in Vinnytsia with the use of a project approach will increase the share of turnover of the restaurant business and achieve a number of positive socio-economic results.

Railway Territorialities

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 230-249
Author(s):  
Mateusz Laszczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Traffic Corridor ◽  
Transnational Space

This article examines transportation infrastructures’ capacity to produce and transform social space through a focus on the contested history of railway development in Valsusa, Italy. I draw on participant observation and interviews with local residents and activists during ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015. I first describe how railways helped form modern sociality in Valsusa in the twentieth century. Subsequently, I explore contrasting topological effects of a projected high-speed rail through the valley. For planners envisioning a trans-European space of exchange, the railway is a powerful way to “shrink” space; for local residents, this implies reducing Valsusa to a traffic “corridor.” Yet their protest generates new social relations and knowledges, giving rise to a notion of “territory” as unbound and connected to a transnational space of resistance to capitalist expansion.

Railway Territorialities

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 230-249
Author(s):  
Mateusz Laszczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Traffic Corridor ◽  
Transnational Space

Abstract This article examines transportation infrastructures’ capacity to produce and transform social space through a focus on the contested history of railway development in Valsusa, Italy. I draw on participant observation and interviews with local residents and activists during ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015. I first describe how railways helped form modern sociality in Valsusa in the twentieth century. Subsequently, I explore contrasting topological effects of a projected high-speed rail through the valley. For planners envisioning a trans-European space of exchange, the railway is a powerful way to “shrink” space; for local residents, this implies reducing Valsusa to a traffic “corridor.” Yet their protest generates new social relations and knowledges, giving rise to a notion of “territory” as unbound and connected to a transnational space of resistance to capitalist expansion.

scholarly journals The rise of the “service economy” in the second half of the twentieth century and its energetic contingencies

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-246
Author(s):  
Ulrich Witt ◽  
Christian Gross
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Productivity Differentials ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Energy Dependent ◽  
Productivity Gains

AbstractThe characteristic of the “service economy” is the rise to dominance of the service sector in terms of employment and value added shares. We track this rise during the second half of the twentieth century for the U.S., more precisely the period from 1970 to 2005. Following seminal work by Baumol (1967) the rise is often attributed to growing productivity differentials between the economic sectors. The causes of the productivity differentials are, however, controversial. Inspired by Georgescu-Roegen’s (1971) evolutionary approach to production theory, the present paper explores whether differences in the energetic features of the sectors’ production technologies contribute to the growing sectorial productivity differentials. For the data for our period of analysis it turns out that a close relationship indeed exists between the sectors’ incentives for substituting relatively cheap energy for ever more expensive labor and their labor productivity gains. In highly energy-dependent sectors an increasing energy/labor ratio has been driving productivity growth while this was not the case in the service sector. The paper closes with a short discussion of what the finding may imply for the future of the service economy.

Servicization with skill premium in the digital economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sang-Chul Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Endogenous Growth ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Factor Productivity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Endogenous Growth Model ◽  
State Path

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine an endogenous growth model, as a component of a broader study of servicization with skill premium and its policy implications in the evolving digital economy. Design/methodology/approach This paper develops a two-sector endogenous growth model which allows for the observed characteristics of digitally empowered structural changes. Specifically, the driving force of economic growth is the expanding variety of intermediate services as a consequence of innovation in services. The introduction of new intermediate services specifically contributes to total factor productivity in the production of service sector, and thus an uneven growth path with skill premium toward a service economy generally exists. Findings The principal finding of this paper is that the digitally empowered expanding variety of intermediate services due to innovation contributes significantly to total factor productivity in the production of service sector, and thus a servicization with skill premium generally exists along a steady-state path. In addition, this paper derives an optimal innovation policy to rule out the market failures due to innovation externality and market power in monopolistic competition conditions, and shows the Rybczynski effects of exogenous endowment changes in the evolving digital economy. Originality/value The principal contribution of this paper is to determine how unbalanced endogenous growth along a steady-state path is linked with a service economy with skill premium in the evolving digital economy. In addition to this analysis, this paper provides policy implications – namely, that a positive but finite innovation subsidy can achieve the social optimum in the digital economy, and that an exogenous increase in high-skilled labor can speed up a digitally empowered economic growth.

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