Thursday, May 15, 2025 – 5pm, Foster 103
Priyanjali Mitra, PhD Student, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
This talk examines the social reproduction of labor and care work, and their gendered implications in the informal economy. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on relational dynamics in low-income households around Gurugram, Haryana, this study explores how women’s unpaid labor is simultaneously naturalized and contested — particularly in negotiations between spouses and other family members. It examines the intersecting social hierarchies that mediate these negotiations, revealing how precarious livelihoods and familial obligations are mutually constituted. This research, grounded in traditions of economic and urban sociology, highlights the complex, embodied experiences of laboring subjects who navigate economic insecurity and familial expectations, underscoring the processual nature of care work and the methodological significance of ethnographic research on urban poor households in a rapidly transforming city.