(Auto) Mobilities, (Auto) Biographies, and the Politics of Transport Work in 20th Century Bombay/Mumbai’s Taxi Trade

There is a surprising absence of a serious study of the social and cultural life of motoring and of transport-workers in studies of urbanisation and globalisation in non-Western cities. Through an anthropological history of Bombay/Mumbai’s taxi trade from the early 20th Century to the present, Tarini Bed examines what particular modes of urban transport (the taxi-trade in particular) in postcolonial cities tell us about the social and cultural life of transport systems, the shifting structures of urban governance, the social and political life of transport and transport labor, and how these together shape the ways people, ideas and money are moved globally across urban spaces. He also explores the changing conditions of work in South Asia in contexts of globalising capital and the emergent articulations of “non-consent” that are produced as a result.  

Speaker
Associate Professor Tarini Bedi,Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago

Presenter
The SouthAsia@UNSW research network and the Globalisation and Governance research network in the School of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Social Science