Attachment, Aspiration, and Inequality in Domestic Labour in India

"Anindita Chatterjee has written an in-depth description of domestic workers’ lives in Kolkata, Noida and Delhi. There are ties that bind all of them, yet each woman has her singular relationship to aspirations, work, family and space. The chapters are well written, rich in terms of conversation between ethnographer and her interlocutors. Using in depth ethnographic research that spanned over four years, the author demonstrates her participation in women workers’ quotidian lives, meeting them in their homes, in tea shops, and in the households where they work. Overall, it is well-written and gives a window into the aspirations of these women. This will be an important book for college students learning about the aspirational lives of women in domestic work."

-- Lamia Karim , Professor of anthropology, University of Oregon, and author of 'Castoffs of Capital: Work and Love Among Garment Workers in Bangladesh.'

"Based on six years of ethnographic research, and grounded in the author’s own early encounters with domestic workers, this illuminating book explores domestic labour as a deeply intimate yet unequal relationship in contemporary India. It shows how affection, kin-like attachment, and care coexist with structural inequality, compulsion, and exclusion. Attending to women workers’ and employers’ everyday emotional lives, the book reveals how class and respectability are reproduced through ordinary interactions. Attachment, Aspiration, and Inequality in Domestic Labour in India offers a compelling account of how love and labour intertwine."

-- Sarah Lamb, author of 'Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion and Possibility and White Saris' and 'Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in India', and Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University.