Global "Body Shopping": An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry

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The book provides an important corrective to analyses that ignore the lower end of the IT labour market. The discussion of how Indian community associations contribute to workers' quiescence is a valuable addition to Saxenian's insights regarding how such community associations in places such as Silicon Valley promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Biao also goes beyond Castells' emphasis on exclusion through the digital divide to show how the more glamorous parts of the IT industry are sustained in part by the flexibility provided by body-shopped labour and the social reproduction taken on by local communities, extended families and governments."—Seán Ó Riain, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

This book is a wonderful contribution to the anthropology of transnationalism and the sociology of labor. It is also a really innovative analysis of an important new professional cadre that is of crucial importance to globalization."—Peter van der Veer, Utrecht University, author of Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in Britain and India p>How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system—a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.

Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as “body shopping.” In this practice, a group of consultants—body shops—in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project’s completion they either place the workers with a different client or “bench” them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement. Xiang has produced what may well be the first contribution of a contemporary anthropologist from China to the ethnographic study of global issues. . . . The book is compact, lucid, and jargon-free, making it one of the most accessible ethnographies of how the global migration regime's shift towards temporary skilled labour is changing societies."—Nyíri Pál, Critique of AnthropologyA] sterling exemplar of what anthropology is and can be today. . . . In a world of anthropologists never-ending anxiety over the loss of cultures, the loss of their own ability to explain cultures, and the problem of finding new things to study, Xiang's book offers a way out: it shows how one can study a structure within a larger system and explain both how that structure works and how it illuminates the function of the larger system. The combination of a simple explanation (hard-won through fieldwork) of a complex technical and economic system, with the exploration of its effects on social and personal lives of an extended network of families, villages, and corporations scattered around the globe is what makes this the perfect 'Intro to Cultural Anthropology' book in my estimation."—Christopher Kelty, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology Xiang Biao (2006). Global "body Shopping": An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691118529. This book is a wonderful contribution to the anthropology of transnationalism and the sociology of labor. It is also a really innovative analysis of an important new professional cadre that is of crucial importance to globalization." —Peter van der Veer, Utrecht University, author of Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in Britain and India The book is] remarkable for meticulous research, mastery of details and understanding of the structures and processes of the industry. . . . This book must be read—not only by all social scientists, but by all those enthusiastic votaries and skeptical denouncers of IT as India's present and future."—Samita Sen, Global South

I find the book most instructive in teaching us how political economic analyses sensitive to fine-grained details about the local and everyday life can enrich a global ethnography. What holds the book together is its creative use of socioanthropological methodologies to understand the phenomenon of 'body shopping' peculiar to the information technology (IT) industry. . . . I find his honesty and the unpredictability of his narratives refreshing."—Mark Lawrence Santiago, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

In this Book

R. Heeks (1996). India's Software Industry: State Policy, Liberalisation and Industrial Development. New Delhi: Sage Publications. According to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report to Congress, for fiscal year 2012, 59 percent of H-1B visas went to computer-related occupations. The same report also cited that 64 percent of the H-1B visa petitions granted were given to workers originating from India. [3] [4] Revenue model [ edit ] Researchers point out that many Indian companies focus heavily on developing a large pool of human resources with technical skills creating a marketplace to 'buy' technical skills on an hourly or daily basis. The book provides an important corrective to analyses that ignore the lower end of the IT labour market. The discussion of how Indian community associations contribute to workers' quiescence is a valuable addition to Saxenian's insights regarding how such community associations in places such as Silicon Valley promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Biao also goes beyond Castells' emphasis on exclusion through the digital divide to show how the more glamorous parts of the IT industry are sustained in part by the flexibility provided by body-shopped labour and the social reproduction taken on by local communities, extended families and governments. ---Seán Ó Riain, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research