This article explores the value of Skeggs’ Formations of Class and Gender for the study of changing social relations amidst rapid socio-economic change in post-liberalisation India. The article is based on insights and reflections from long-term ethnographic research with young lower middle class women in Delhi, employed in the emerging services sector. For these young women, ‘working’ is not merely an activity, it is an identity. And employment is not merely a source of income, it is a site for renegotiation of social relations. As they traverse between home, work and leisure, their new subjectivities come under contestation. In conversations, young women readily talk about gender and class, but are relatively silent about caste, even though it plays out in subtle ways in the workplace and more generally in their everyday lives. This context throws up a set of new questions in relation to Formations – can we understand the entanglements of gender, class and caste in the same way that Skeggs proposes the inextricability of gender and class? What, if any, are the differences between respectability, honour and prestige? Does a Bourdieusian framework open up or limit the avenues of analysis for this context? Engaging with these questions, this article demonstrates the wide-ranging appeal of Skeggs’ astute thinking in Formations of Class and Gender and brings it into dialogue with Global South feminist scholarship.

中文翻译：

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成为“职业”女性：印度城市中的性别、阶级和种姓的形成


本文探讨了 Skeggs 的《阶级和性别的形成》对于研究自由化后印度快速社会经济变化中不断变化的社会关系的价值。本文基于对德里年轻中下阶层女性的长期民族志研究的见解和反思，她们受雇于新兴服务行业。对于这些年轻女性来说，“工作”不仅仅是一种活动，更是一种身份。就业不仅仅是收入来源，还是重新协商社会关系的场所。当他们在家庭、工作和休闲之间穿梭时，他们的新主体性受到了争议。在对话中，年轻女性很容易谈论性别和阶级，但对种姓相对保持沉默，即使它在工作场所和更普遍的日常生活中以微妙的方式发挥作用。这个背景提出了一系列与形成有关的新问题——我们能否像 Skeggs 提出性别和阶级的不可分割性一样理解性别、阶级和种姓的纠葛？如果有的话，受人尊敬、荣誉和声望之间有什么区别？布迪厄斯式的框架是否开辟或限制了这种背景下的分析途径？针对这些问题，本文展示了 Skeggs 在《阶级和性别的形成》中的精明思考的广泛吸引力，并将其与全球南方女权主义学术界进行对话。