Glimpses of Hope : : The Rise of Industrial Labor at the Urban Margins of Nepal / / Michael Hoffmann.

• VerfasserIn: Hoffmann, Michael,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Dislocations ; 32
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (218 p.)

Over the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle-class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in areas such as modern food-processing, water-bottling, housebuilding, and sand-mining industries and explores how workers see such forms of work, where union organization can help, and how work opportunities emerge along lines of gender and ethnicity. Although global labor relations have been mostly in decline for decades, this ethnography offers insights and glimpses of hope in terms of labor dynamics and the opportunities various jobs may afford.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- NOTES ON THE TEXT -- Map of Nepal -- Introduction. The Noodle King -- PART I. Work at the Margins of Nepalgunj -- Chapter 1 From Casual to Permanent Work in a Food Factory -- Chapter 2 From Bonded to Industrial Labor in a Food Factory -- Chapter 3 New Forms of Spirituality in a Food Factory -- PART II. Work at the Margins of Pokhara -- Chapter 4 Work, Precarity, and Militant Unionism in an Industrial Area -- Chapter 5 Gendered Divisions of Work in the Water-Bottling Plants -- Chapter 6 Class, Ethnicity, and Labor Mobilization in the Construction Industry -- Chapter 7 Mafia, Labor, and Shamanism in a Sand Mine -- Conclusion Glimpses of Hope -- GLOSSARY -- REFERENCES -- INDEX