The Work of Social Work: NGOs and the Fetishization of Work in Bodhgaya, India

Abstract

This essay explores wage relations, social work, and the interplay of an array of class and nonclass processes in the context of NGOs in Bodhgaya, India, site of Buddha’s enlightenment. It argues that discourses of “social work,” “collaboration,” and “socially engaged Buddhism” have enabled foreign NGO directors, many of whom moved to India for humanitarian purposes, to rationalize wages below poverty level, to fetishize NGO projects as distinct from the work relations that have produced them, and to capitalize on exchange-rate inequalities in the name of producing as much “social work” as possible in a poverty-stricken area of the Indian state of Bihar. Though Bihari NGO workers have resisted this framing and have pursued NGO work as a source of employment and as an avenue for upward mobility, a scarcity of waged work opportunities has made it difficult for resistance to take forms other than absenteeism and jockeying for better-paying jobs.

Key Words:

• Class Analysis
• Development
• India
• NGOs
• Social Work

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by support from the Fulbright Institute of International Education; a Foreign Language Area Studies fellowship; the University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Anthropology; and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I am grateful to the individuals in Bodhgaya who made this research possible, especially Shankar, Kundan, Francisco, Mitlesh, Santosh, Mary, Davendra, Beatrice, Balwant, Patricia, David Geary, Kory Goldberg, and Abhishek Singh. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, the guidance, support, and feedback of Triloki Nath Pandey, Donald Brenneis, Lisa Rofel, James Clifford, Megan Moodie, Annapurna Pandey, Olga Najera-Ramirez, Mark Anderson, Jason Alley, Melissa Hackman, Zeb Rifaqat, and Noah Tamarkin were essential for seeing this research and article to fruition. At Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Christopher Gunn, Elizabeth Ramey, and Kendralin Freeman offered extensive commentary and support, for which they have my sincere gratitude. Thanks also to Rethinking Marxism reviewers Eray Düzenli and Suzanne Bergeron for their very thoughtful and critical commentary. Lastly, I thank Naomi Rodriguez for reading countless drafts and offering invaluable critical feedback and support.

Notes

1 All names used in this article are pseudonyms.

2 See Barker (2012) on how “affect” and “love” similarly position “women’s work” as not “work.”

3 Brown (2009) and Kingsolver (2012), for example, offer empowering accounts of the mutability and fissures that make neoliberal policy contestable.

4 See, for example, Taussig (1980) for an analysis of the processes of proletarianization among South American miners.

5 See Fraad, Resnick, and Wolff’s (1989) discussion of the feudal class process in the household.