Puff and Pull: Rickshaw Pullers through the Lens of Human Capital

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the lives of rickshaw pullers around the Indian Ocean Rim in the first half of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the cities of Singapore and Durban. It analyzes the rickshaw puller as a species of “human capital.” This unorthodox approach highlights how human beings were treated like capital goods: machines for the production of profit. Their costs of living could be understood as investments in more productive bodies. A focus on the consumption of food, shelter, and narcotics also reveals how capitalists sought to profit from the making of more productive human bodies. It finally suggests that economic theories of human capital have neglected the profound yet dehumanizing effects that this economic paradigm imposes on those who have no financial capital to invest in themselves.