1-800-Worlds

Review

‘From its surprising forms of intimacy to varying forms of violence, and from the sensuous properties of its particular mode of transnationalism to its distinct temporal rhythms, Krishnamurthy expertly brings to life the personal stakes of “never enough flexibility” in contemporary capitalism.’
—Jacob Copeman is senior lecturer of social anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, UK.

‘1-800-Worlds is a sensitive ethnographic portrait of those working the phones for multinational corporations—their anonymous voices, embodied experiences, aspirations, and disillusions. Fleshing out generic abstractions about the global economy, Krishnamurthy’s ethnography offers a richly textured, deeply empathetic understanding of what it actually feels like to work in the global service sector.’
—Ara Wilson is associate professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, USA.

Global capitalism can sometimes appear amorphous and immaterial. But 1-800-Worlds shows how dependent socioeconomic formations are on the fostering of particular embodied desires—desires for affluence and security, desires for social connection, and desires for an imagined, elusive, flexibility. Krishnamurthy’s ethnographic intimacy with employees of Indian call centres and her own work history help to demonstrate how rooted capitalism is in the lives of individuals. 1-800-Worlds shows how ideas about personal, community, and national futures shape the labour experience of workers through inspiring flexibility. Call centres may seem a world away, but 1-800-Worlds shows how they—and the lives of their workers—are emblematic of early 21st century global capitalism and its everyday logics; not amorphous, but deeply corporeal; not immaterial, but made and remade through our local, daily practices.
—Matthew Wolf-Meyer is associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, USA.