Kitchen, Farm, Room – Spaces of Transnational Feminist Theorising by Working Class Women in India

Abstract

The term “labour geography”, first coined by Andrew Herod (1997), sought to shift the capital-centric focus of economic geography to a more labour-centric focus. Feminist scholars have long argued for paying attention to the ways that labour’s social relations and lived experiences shape the politics of labour beyond wages or formal employment. However, labour geographers problematically continue to separate the larger questions of existence, analytically and ontologically, from the questions of work and everyday labour struggles. This article draws attention to the significance of quotidian processes of theorising by working class women in India as they labour and mobilise across disparate social, economic and cultural locations. The spaces of work discussed in this article are transnational, because, as spaces of knowledge production they are shaped by, and in turn shape, transnational narratives and strategies around global labour struggle. The article offers two key insights regarding a) the everyday kno ledge production of working-class women, forged through work and struggle; and b) the significance of paying attention to the political thoughts and acts of working-class women, which holds possibilities for new solidarities and political alliances. These points are made through three illustrations – women farmers at the farmers’ protest in the outskirts of Delhi, women singing ovi in rural Maharashtra, and women factory workers creating radio podcasts in Tamil Nadu.