Precarious entanglements : exploring the everyday lives of women working as street vendors in Bengaluru marketplaces : a thesis completed in partial fulfilment of a Master of Arts in Social Anthropology, Massey University
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Date
2021
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Massey University
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Abstract
This research explores the precarious everyday lives of women working as street vendors in Bengaluru marketplaces. In August 2015, I travelled to Bengaluru, India where I spent time hanging out in marketplaces around the city and had informal conversations with approximately fifty women working as vendors. I initially went to Bengaluru to ask them about the provision of toilets and sanitation in their workspaces, however, while they faced a number of issues with provision, the women were deeply embedded in a struggle over public spaces for vending and were experiencing constant evictions. This was a more immediate and serious issue, as it directly jeopardised their ability to vend, and earn a livelihood to support themselves and their families. In response to what was revealed in the fieldwork, this research broadened to look at the provision of public space for vending and the impact a lack of safe and secure spaces has on the daily life of women vendors working in a rapidly urbanising environment. Importantly, the conversations showed that the women in my study did not have the option of challenging the evictions or access to support that would enable them to advocate for more secure spaces. Consequently, the women made several compromises including working long hours, taking on large amounts of debt and vending in spaces that impacted their health and wellbeing, while maintaining daily routines and caring for multiple family members. To understand the experiences of the women, I have positioned this work within contemporary anthropology on precarity and everyday life, specifically the work of Veena Das (2006), Clara Han (2012), Bhrigupati Singh (2014) and Kathleen Millar (2018). Their ideas created a framework which enabled me to understand and comment on precarity in relation to how it is experienced by the women in my study, focusing on how they live through a varying forms and fluctuations of precarity in daily life. This places the women at the center of thought but also highlights how the economic, political and social systems they are embedded within impacts their capacity to endure. Sharing the conversations with the women, alongside my observations of their context, draws attention to the small realities of everyday life as a woman working as a vendor. While these are often stories of hardship and adversity, they are also accounts of everyday life, and show how the women work to keep life functioning and continue working, even when faced with immensely difficult challenges, revealing precarity in its rawest form – embedded within the small actions and compromises in everyday life.
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Bengaluru, Bengalore, informal work, street vending, precarity, precariousness, sanitation, toilets, vendors, KR Market