Resisting labour control and optimizing social ties: experiences of women construction workers in Delhi
研究印度建筑行业女性工人如何通过社会资本和道德经济观念来抵制劳动控制，揭示她们在缺乏正式合同下利用与承包商和同事的关系来改善处境，对关注劳动权益和性别平等的学者有参考价值。
Even as employment in the construction industry in India has grown in recent decades, economic insecurities of workers persist. The existing forms of work and labour control, embedded in capitalist and patriarchal relations, are significant for women’s ability to question or resist their conditions of work. To understand the relations among workers and between workers and contractors/employers, this study draws on Scott’s idea of the ‘moral economy’. I argue in this article that in the absence of formal or legal contracts between workers and contractors, women are led to mobilize on their social capital or their valued relations with contractors and co-workers. Women’s responses to their situation may not demonstrate a strong articulation of exploitation in class or feminist terms, but their political sense is informed by ideas of morality and reciprocity in relationships. Their resistance could be strengthened when they collectively act with workers in a similar situation.