The glassmaker’s gesture, the clinking of bangles, and the burning of flesh. The value of know-how, power relations, and the quest for independence among the Shishgarh of Firozabad
Type de matériel :
31
This article deals with the professional conscientiousness of the glassmakers of Firozabad, focusing on stories of the elaboration, transmission and dispossession of the know-how of the Shishgarh. This Muslim glassmaking caste from the north of India has an enormous mastery of the skills needed in the century-old production of Firozabad. The accounts given by the Shishgarh show a double dispossession of their know-how: on the one hand from below, when their skills were transmitted outside their community and, above all from above, when they were proletarianised. Their struggles to regain autonomy are a metonymy of the struggles between know-how and industrial capital that run throughout Firozabad.
Réseaux sociaux