Anthropologist | Writer | Researcher | Teacher
WRITING
Selected Published and Publicly Presented Work
>WHEN MUSLIM WOMEN PUBLICLY UNVEIL: EXPLORING VEILING THROUGH WOMEN’S WORK AND MOBILITY IN INDIA
Under Review
Artisans in the old city of Delhi experience tremendous uncertainties in finding stable, well-paying work. The diminishing value of their craft contributes to the precariousness of everyday life. One aspect of living a precarious life is that many Muslim female artisans increasingly travel to local bazaars, other neighborhoods, and often to craft fairs where they have access to tourists and commercial buyers. During their travels, female artisans can go from being veiled to unveiled without any fuss. In light of this public unveiling, what of the veil as a powerful symbol of piety, resistance, or oppression? This article reframes the veil as a parabody – an accomplice body that moves with its wearer – rather than a signifier. This reframing necessitates attending to how the veil as parabody adjusts to the varying intensities and atmospheres of the different geographies that women encounter during their everyday working lives.
>CRAFTING MUSLIM ARTISANS: AGENCY AND EXCLUSION IN INDIA’S URBAN CRAFT COMMUNITIES
2016, In Clare Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia DiNicola (Eds.), Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, Capitalism. London: Bloomsbury. (pdf)
In this chapter, I critically examine how two particularly salient categories, artisan and labor, are constructed and subverted throughout the occupational trajectories and life-courses of embroidery workers in India. I will consider how local experiences and articulations of work, and engagements with economic and social contingencies, blur the boundaries between conceptualizations of “artisan” and “labor.”
>WHO MADE THAT POLICE BADGE? THE SHADOW LIVES OF A HIDDEN WORKFORCE
2016, Huffington Post. http://goo.gl/91BfsK
Would it be surprising to know that an intricate Canadian police badge was embroidered by a woman named Rana Begum in the courtyard of a dilapidated housing complex in the old city of Delhi, India? In this article, I explore the hidden workforce that produces many of the items we see and use on a daily basis.
>MUSLIM ARTISANS, ETHICS, AND SKILLED WORK: A CASE FOR THE PROFESSIONAL “UNDERCLASS”
2016, presented for the conference: “Mobile Muslim Professionals: Trans-regional Connectedness and (Non-state) Cooperation in Asia and the Middle East,” Berlin, Germany (pdf)
Does professionalism exist among the informal occupations traditionally associated with the urban poor? This paper presents a case for thinking about “professionalization” as both already existing among segments of the urban poor and simultaneously as an aspirational subject-position largely defined by the intersection of global capital and projects of the nation-state (i.e. the production of the ideal middle class worker-citizen).
>VIDEO: WHY DO WE NEED A GLOBAL HISTORY OF WORK?
2013, Presented at the conference: "Globality in the Space of Reflection of the Kate Hamburger Kollegs," Bonn, Germany
Watch the presentation and Q&A here.
>WORK AND DEVOTION: THE CONSTITUTION OF SUBJECTIVITIES AMONG WORKING-CLASS MUSLIMS IN URBAN INDIA
2013, Final Paper for Re:Work Research Fellowship (pdf)
My research project at Re:work explored a question that I began initially thinking about in my doctoral dissertation. I wanted to better understand the extent to which certain Islamic traditions in India, namely those passed down within Sufi orders, influenced the work practices as well as the meaning of work among subaltern Muslims. As such, I began to scrutinize my fieldwork notes and interview transcriptions more closely and explored whether the everyday language and terminologies used by artisans could provide an everyday form of “evidence” suggesting the resilience of Sufism, especially for subaltern Muslims. Work as devotion was the starting point of this project.
>CRAFT, ARTISANS, AND THE NATION-STATE IN INDIA
2011, In Isabelle Clark-Deces (Ed.), Blackwell Companion to the Anthropology of India. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. (pdf)
The objective of this chapter is to shed light on artisans in India by first providing a general overview of the state of crafts, and then discussing the findings of anthropological research conducted with artisanal groups. There are three broad themes that emerge from ethnographic work on artisans: ( 1) The importance of local knowledge systems to the lifeworlds of artisans; ( 2) the formation of identities among artisanal groups; and ( 3) the marginalization of artisans, particularly women, in a context where the terms of production are often dictated by globalization and neoliberal orthodoxies.
>RETHINKING RESEARCH METHODS: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL EDITION
2011, Anthropology Matters, https://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/view/181/300.
This special edition of Anthropology Matters focuses on a fundamental question that virtually all social scientists encounter, namely how to conduct research on any given topic. Although this question appears straightforward at first pass, practical experience demonstrates the theoretical and pragmatic complexities involved in conducting research.