Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, , Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Findings in Russia.

1

• "Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, ?????
  ?????, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical
  Findings in Russia."

Dr. Denis Gruber State University of St.
Petersburg Faculty of Sociology DAAD-Lecturer for
Sociology
2
Themenübersicht

• meeting 12.02.2009 Introduction
• meeting 19.02.2008 Concepts of Lebensführung,
  Lebensweise, lifestyle
• meeting 26.02.2009 Lifestyle, Everyday life and
  milieus
• meeting 05.03.2009 Lifestyle, everyday life and
  socialism
• meeting 12.03.2009 Lifestyle, everyday life
  and work in socialist period
• meeting 19.03.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Gender Aspects

3
Themenübersicht

• meeting 26.03.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia housing situation
• meeting 02.04.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Poverty, homelessness, The
  search for security
• meeting 16.04.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Religious communities and
  affiliation
• meeting 23.04.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Family structures and
  demographic trends

4
Themenübersicht

• meeting 30.04.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Deviance I - Prostitution,
  Pornography, AIDS,
• meeting 21.05.2009 Everyday life in
  contemporary Russia Deviance II physically
  disabled and mentally handicaped persons,
  consumption of drugs and alcohol

5
"Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, ?????
?????, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical
Findings in Russia."
1. Meeting Concepts of Lebensführung,
Lifestyles, Lifeworld
6
Concepts of Lifestyle
7
Key Questions

• What does the notion of everyday life mean?
• What does Lebensführung (lifestyle, modus
  vivendi, way of life) mean?
• Which differences for lifestyle are obvious in
  comparision of the Soviet and the contemporary
  period?

8
Concepts of Lifestyle

• sociologically, two important functions
• classify or categorize the practitioner within a
  broader social matrix
• offer practitioners a unique sense of self and
  identity
• combine material and symbolic processes
• practical ways of providing for basic needs and
  requirements such as food, clothing, and shelter
• also aesthetic and symbolic expressions of one's
  sense of self and of one's membership among
  certain social groups.
• lifestyles occur at the intersection of
  individual agency and social structure
• has sustained as a key sociological concept,
  capable of bridging the divide between
  macro-level concerns
• a bridge between large scale social structures
  and social groupings, and micro-level concerns
  with the subjective dimensions of agency,
  meaning, and identity

9
Approaches of Lifestyle in Sociology

• research of Lebensführung is closely-linked with
  important sociological approaches like
• Karl Marx ? class concept and differentiation of
  work and reproduction
• Max Weber ? rational way of life
  (Lebensführung)
• Durkheim ? differentiation theory
• Simmel ? cultural criticism about the individual
• life style research with the focus on disparities
  in Lebensführung (Bolte, Kudera, Voß)
• Sociology of leisure
• Habermas ? differentiation between system and
  Lebenswelt
• Habitus theory ? Bourdieu

10
Lebensführung-Max Weber

• traditionale Lebensführung refers to routines
  and valid norms of the everyday
• strategische Lebensführung can be seen as a kind
  of planning ones life to reach aims
• situative Lebensführung does not follow
  routines and rational or logical aspects, but is
  characterized by flexiblity

11
Georg Simmel

• Simmel began with the elements of everyday life
• - playing games
• keeping secrets
• being a stranger
• forming friendships
• the quality of relationships

12
Georg Simmel Social Types

• The Stranger
• The stranger in Simmels terminology, is not
  just a wanderer who comes today and goes
  tomorrow, having no specific structural
  position. On the contrary, he is a person who
  comes today and stays tomorrowHe is fixed within
  a particular spatial groupbut his positionis
  determinedby the fact that he does not belong to
  it from the beginning, and that he may leave
  again.
• The stranger is an element of the group itself
  while not being fully part of it. He therefore is
  assigned a role that no other members of the
  group can play. By virtue of his partial
  involvement in group affairs he can attain an
  objectivity that other members cannot
  reachMoreover, being distant and near at the
  same time, the stranger will often be called upon
  as a confidantIn similar ways, the stranger may
  be a better judge between conflicting parties
  than full members of the group since he is not
  tied to either of the contenders

13
Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)

• Dramaturgical approach to understanding human
  behavior and interactions.
• Impression management in everyday settings
• How does the self form, act, and change in
  response to interactions with others?

14
Concept Alltägliche Lebensführung (Everyday
life)

• Following Webers investigations in
  Lebensführung the concept of Alltägliche
  Lebensführung was elaborated in the 1980s and
  90s (Bolte, Voß and Kudera)
• In this approach Lebensführung is understood as
  a balance of contradictory demands and claims
  which fulfils important functions for individuals
  as well as society and for the mediation of both
  spheres (cf. Voß 199537)
• Lebensführung is a bridge between the
  individual and the society, it is a societal
  ordinal factor which encloses the creation of the
  everyday life (Bolte 200027)
• .

15
Concept Alltägliche Lebensführung (Everyday
life)

• key points of this approach refer to (cf.
  Weihrich 19986)
• Lebensführung refers to an everyday connection of
  the practical life. It concerns with the question
  how a person organizes the everyday life.
• Lebensführung is understood as an active
  achievement of construction of individuals who
  have to connect different activities, demands and
  expectations.
• Lebensführung is not only determined by specific
  social structures but it also depends on specific
  historical circumstances
• Lebensführung is a category between individual
  and societal structures

16
Concept Alltägliche Lebensführung (Everyday
life)

• concept refers to a rising educational level,
  decline of the type of "normal family", changed
  life plans and life orientations, increasing
  differentiation of the employer-employee
  relationships, flexibility of working hours (cf.
  Kudera 200077 following)
• Lifestyle is understood as a balance by
  contradictory demands and claims
• Lifestyle becomes the individual and social
  ordinal factor, it encloses the order of the
  everyday life

17
Concept Alltägliche Lebensführung (Everyday
life)

• Lifestyle expresses how a person refers to the
  different societal spheres and arranges with
  these partial, spatially, contentually (Voß
  199532)
• Lifestyle means the arrangement of the single
  arrangements of a person (Voß in 1995 32)
• These arrangements are changeable, they vary due
  to the interplay of different persons and depend
  on respective living conditions (cf. Kudera/Voß
  200016)
• but these arrangements can stabilize human
  lifestyle ? they can be important for secure
  bases and methods, own rules, priorities and
  routines (Kudera/Voß 200017)

18

• Following Kudera (1995) lifestyles can be
  classified as follows
• differentiation (easy-complex)
• elasticity (open-closed, stiff-flexible)
• stability (robust-fragile)
• processing capacity of contradictions
• regulation
• available resources

19
Summary The Concept of Everyday Lifestyle

• Weihrich (19986)
• a) lifestyle refers to the everyday connection of
  the practical life. It is not the question what a
  person is doing, but how the everyday is
  organized!
• b) lifestyle is an active construction
  achievement of the person who must bind different
  activities, demands and expectations to an
  arrangement
• c) lifestyle is not only determined by societal
  structures, because its form and logic depends
  also on historical situation
• d) lifestyle means a category between the
  individual (subject) and social structures.

20
"Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, ?????
?????, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical
Findings in Russia."

• 2. Meeting
• Classes, Layers, Milieus, lifestyles, lifeworld,
  Habitus

21
Key words for social structure analysis

• Group (subgroups)
• Caste
• Stand ? Status
• Class
• Layer
• Milieu
• Lifestyles

social life situations
22
Class Theory Marx (1818 1883)

• social conflict was the core of historical
  process (cf. Coser 197743)
• class is a social group which members are
  characterized by a similar position in the
  economic system and a common social position
  (Klassenlage, class position), common interests
  and common consciousness (Klassenbewusstsein,
  class consciousness)
• ...the social relations people enter into by
  participating in economic life create an
  economic category/social phenomenon known as
  social class
• Classes were formed to control the means of
  property possession
• This would in turn result in class conflicts

23
Social Class Max Weber (1864 1920)

• dimensions of social inequality class positions
  are interpreted as market and power positions
• difference between property class and worker
  class (property as central differentiation marker
  for chances, e.g. qualification)

24
Social Layers

• an order of social positions and prestige, which
  is responsible for the hierarchical occupational
  structure
• social inequality can be measured for individual
  distribution of issues (property, knowledge,
  relations, occupation, etc.)
• a person is able to change ist vertical social
  mobility, in this sense, a person can change ist
  belonging to a social layer
• due to the change of social layers belonging
  also life styles are changing
• indicators
• occupational positions (occupational prestige),
• income
• education
• in families issues of households planning

25
Social Layer of a modern Mittelstandsgesellschaft
(middle class society) in the second half of
the 20. century
upper class
middle class
uper middle class
centred middle class
lower middle class
lower class
26
Habitus and social class

• For Bourdieu, class position is not based crudely
  on the possession or non-possession of the means
  of production as in Marxist materialistic
  conceptions of class
• Bourdieu uses Webers approach that allows him to
  identify different types of social behaviour of
  social classes (layers)
• Bourdieu argues that cultural forms (the habitus)
  are mainly determined by the socio-economic
  situation, by the distribution of economic and
  cultural capital
• Bourdieu sees class as determined by largely
  economic factors, and as a set of practices,
  dispositions and feelings

27
The Concept of Habitus

• is the link between the objective and the
  subjective components of class
• Habitus refers to the everyday, the situations,
  actions, practices and choices which tend to go
  with a particular walk of life and an
  individuals position in the social world (this
  includes, e.g. gender and race as well as class)
• Habitus can be seen as including a set of
  dispositions, tendencies to do some things rather
  than others and to do them in particular ways
  rather than in other ways
• Habitus does not determine our practices, but it
  does make it more likely that we will adopt
  certain practices rather than others

28
Social Milieu

• introduced in sociology by Émile Durkheim who
  refers to a social environment, in which an
  individual is born-in, grows-up and lives
• Emerged in early 80s from ongoing research into
  lifeworlds (SINUS)
• people who are living under similar conditions
  and share common values, same opinions, and
  follow common styles of interaction (cf. Hradil
  2006)
• groups that are sharing common interests, similar
  value identification, common practices of life
  planning, similar relations to other persons,
  similar mentalities and political, social,
  clutural interest
• objective social conditions d influence and
  limitate the way of thinking and interacting of
  this group, but they do not coin it, therefore,
  memebrs of the same occupational group can belong
  to different social milieus (cf. Hradil 1999)
• 2006)

29
Towards a theory of Social Milieus The new
cultural sociology in Germany

• main argument life-styles do not have to spring
  from the economic situation (Gerhard Schulze,
  Reinhard Kreckel, Hans-Peter Müller, Stefan
  Hradil)
• milieus rely on internal communication from which
  a common life-style emerges (Schulze)
• milieus are not clear-cut social entities, but
  they overlap and form a plural and interrelated
  social universe (Rössel)
• Milieus can thus be conceived of as networks with
  increased internal connectivity
• Based on this connectivity, they develop a
  specific life-style that in turn makes internal
  ties more likely than ties to other milieus
• Friendships form more easily between people with
  similar values, or around the foci of activity
  (bars, sports clubs etc.) in such life-style
  milieus

30
Towards a theory of Social Milieus The new
cultural sociology in Germany

• However, modern social structure is too plural
  and multi-faceted to be partitioned into milieus
  as clearcut entities
• milieu concept is able to capture a tendential
  ordering of ties around common values and
  activities but it does not lead to a neatly
  ordered topology of society
• milieu is seen as the social environment of
  cultural patterns and people around us it is
  not a bounded group.
• The bases for such milieus can be manifold ?
• by age, gender, level of education, wealth,
  common activities, ethnic descent, race,
  locality, etc.

31
After Germanys reunification introduction of
new typologies for social milieu researches
middle class-humanistic Milieu traditional
working and peasant milieu GDR-rooted Milieu
political left-intellectual alternative Milieu
Status- and career-oriented Milieu
upward-oriented Milieu non-traditional working
class milieu Hedonistic Milieu Modern working
class milieu modern middle-class-milieu
traditional middle-class Milieu
32
Core values of the SINUS milieus
33
Social milieus in West Germany according to SINUS
1998
Social position ?
Conservative-technocratic10
Liberal-intellectual 10
Modern bourgeois 9
Postmodern 7
Petty bourgeois 8
Modern workers 8
Aspiring 20
Hedonistic 13
Traditional workers 4
Traditionless workers 11
Value orientation ?
34
Social milieus in West Germany according to SINUS
1998
Social position ?
Value orientation ?
35
Sinus Milieus - France
Quelle (Abb.) www.sinus-sociovision.de
36
Sinus-Milieus Germany
Quelle (Abb.) www.sinus-sociovision.de
37
"Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, ?????
?????, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical
Findings in Russia."
3. Meeting Lifestyles, Everyday Life, Socialism
and Postsocialism
38
Socialisms principles

• egalitarianism or equality ? Capitalism exploits
  the very people who create societys wealth.
• Moralism ? social justice and true liberty for
  all. 

39
Karl Marxs key ideas

• - economic systems go through historic cycles
• over time, an economic system becomes rigid and
  cannot adjust to new technologies
• a new system emerges, with new class relations
  and oppression
• someday, a perfect classless society will emerge
  and there will be no further cycles

40
Communist Revolution

• Revolution will eliminate private property
• No longer will man have the means of exploiting
  another man.
• Bourgeoisie will fight, so revolution will be
  violent.
• A dictatorship of the proletariat will follow to
  weed out remaining capitalist elements.

41
The Workers Utopia

• In the end, a classless society with no more
  oppression or internal contradictions.
• People are able to live to their fullest
  potential ? Consider the description in Marxs
  Communist Manifesto in 1845
• In communist society, nobody has one exclusive
  sphere of activity but each can become
  accomplished in any branch he wishes, to hunt in
  the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle
  in the evening, criticize after dinner, without
  ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or
  critic.

42
Real-existing socialism

• JÁNOS KORNAI (1980, 1988) investigated the
  shortage economy in Socialist societies
• KORNAI sees the reasons of the chronical shortage
  of ressources of socialist economies caused by
  the institutional basic structure of the economic
  system
• JÁNOS KORNAI defines an economy as a shortage
  economy if this shortage is manifested,
  obviously, intensively and chronical (not only
  spatial)
• emphazises the primate of politics political
  institutions are responsible for the emergence of
  economic institutions
• but political and economic institutions together
  are stimulating the MOTIVATION STRUCTURES of a
  societal system and are influencing the
  capabilities of a national economy
• intermingle of previous pre-socialist structures
  with socialist principles have caused obstacles
  for economic rise of socialist systems
  (exception USSR in the 1920s and 1930s)

43
Real-existing socialism

• the self-reproducing shortage in all spheres of
  economy causes the limited access to resources
  for actors
• the political system (socialist ones with only
  one-party-system) is the core point and origin
  for all further developments
• different attemps of perfektionism or reformism
  of the system can not be succesful as long as the
  position of the Communist Party is not critized
• centralized political system of socialist
  societies emphasisez state property and the
  absence of private ownership
• decentralized character of private ownership is
  not congruent with a totalitarian political
  system
• elimination of capitalistical forms of property
  was not the result of a sudden economical
  development process ? it was the result of the
  conception of the Communist Party state ownership

44
The view of Srubar (1991)

• According to Srubar, the ineffectiveness of the
  socialist economy combined with the Communist
  party power monopoly created a distinct mechanism
  of social integration of 'compensatory
  redistribution networks of goods and services
• In a socialist shortage economy, the consumer's
  main worry generally was not how to get money to
  buy products
• Instead, the main problems were first, how to
  find information about the availability of goods,
  and second, how to gain access to them
• Both problems were solved with the help of one's
  social network
• real nature of these redistribution networks have
  created an atmosphere of 'functional friendship'
  of mutual favours

45
Lebensführung in Socialism and post-socialism

• Transformation does not only mean that
  market-economy "institutions" are introduced
  ("institution transfer") but that the economic
  actors at all economic levels also at the level
  of private households are acting with market
  behavior
• The everyday transformation of economic action is
  the basis of our concept of Lebensführung
• In the prior phase of transformation close
  institutions got lost, and the adaptation to new
  institutions of the market economy and the new
  market action required time to tune own roles and
  activities in the everyday practice or to define
  totally new
• Uncertainty, planning deficits, crises in the
  economic system of the national states are only
  some catchwords which can be stated for this
  period

46
Discussing Post-Communist Pathways

• transformation or transition
• post-socialist development with ideal-typical
  text-book capitalism will be successfully?
• Transitions are seen as processes which carry out
  in stages from political liberalization, via
  democratisation to consolidation and/or
  regression of democracies
• Transitions are mostly restricted to the
  political sphere of transformations and refer to
  the period of transition from one type of
  political system to another

47
Discussing Post-Communist Pathways

• term transformation is often used to describe
  developments in Middle and Eastern European
  States in relationship to intermingle and
  simultaneously processes of economic, political
  and social change
• transformational research often refers to Talcott
  Parsons theory of modernization
• ? is based on the fact that after the collapse of
  state socialist systems, modernization theory has
  an advantage against Marxist approaches

48
Modernization Theory

• a theory of development and constitution of
  western industrial nations
• Stands as a synonym of modernity and progress
• modernization is merely the adaptation of the
  paragon of the highly developed capitalistic
  industrial nations
• central assumption in the course of the process
  of modernization all societies develop a
  universal pattern of development, which maintains
  against regional and temporal countertendencies
• paradigm assumes an unilinear process of
  development, but
• Have all Western nations taken the same way of
  development?
• Have all post-socialist countries the same
  preconditions?

49
Path dependency

• Path dependency theorists (e.g. North) argue for
  policy strategies tailored to national pathways
• tend to overestimate the actually attainable
  range of systemic diversity
• underestimate the constraints imposed by Western
  regime goals and powerful global actors
• concentrating on the past and origins
• However, they open up a potential to consider the
  future of Eastern European capitalism as being
  different from the Western European one, due to
  unique historical experience.
• main focus is on concrete, historical, and
  region-specific forms of emergent capitalism,
  distinct from the Western-European type of
  capitalism

50
Path dependency

• national and regional developments take divergent
  paths
• focus on how the development of an economic
  system is coined through different constrains and
  resources
• socio-economic transformation debate concentrates
  on the informal structures and relations that
  have come up as a reaction to the rigid and
  inadequate conditions of communism and planned
  economy
• Parallel structures emerged, referring to the
  first, legal and second, informal economy inside
  and outside the governmental sector
• networks of actors inside and between state
  institutions, networks among economic and
  political actors
•  

51
"Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, ?????
?????, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical
Findings in Russia."

• 4. Meeting
• Informal Sector and Informal Practices in
  Everyday Life
• A View on India

52
Informal Sector definition

• term "informal sector" has been used to describe
  a wide spectrum of activities, which do not
  necessarily have much in common
• tax evasion, corruption, money laundering,
  organised crime, bribery, subsistence farming,
  barter etc.
• concept was introduced by the ILO (International
  Labor Office) in a study on Kenya in 1972
• often the term is used to refer to economic
  activities that take place outside a given
  recognized and legal institutional framework
• activities in the IS generate an income that is
  both not taxed and not controlled by the legal
  institutions which regulate the legal sphere
• following Bernabè (2002) it refers to small
  either unregistered and unregulated activities,
  or activities concealed in order to avoid tax
  payment, or even activities producing goods and
  services forbidden by the law

53
Describing the Informal Sector

• Differences to the Formal Sector
• smaller scale of enterprises and production units
  (varying from individuals, single households to
  enterprises with a few employees)
• lower complexity of the production process
• use of high technology and expensive energy to a
  much lesser extent
• less division of labour
• lower capital-intensity
• wages that are not based on the working time but
  on quantities (number of produced pieces)
• high fluctuation of employees
• production that is located in the housing/ living
  space or on the streets
• high degree of Insecurity

54
Describing the Informal Sector

• ILO World Employment Programme Report puts the
  following characteristics
• ease to entry
• reliance on indigenious ressources
• family ownership of enterprises
• small scale of operation
• skills aquired outside the formal school system
  and unregulated and competetive markets.
• but following Kumar and Jena the above mentioned
  characteristics lack validity, because one has to
  focus on rural and urban as well as regional and
  international differences

55
The Size of the Informal Sector

• since 1950, the proportion of people working in
  the primary sector of developing countries has
  declined by 20 to 30 per cent
• a large percentage of urban poor voluntarily
  migrated from the rural to the urban areas, in
  order to exploit actual or perceived economic
  opportunities
• migration flows resulted in the growing urban
  informal sector, which is most visible in the
  growing and large-sale informal squatter
  settlements in urban centres
• In many cities in India, the informal sector
  accounts for as much as 60 per cent of employment
  of the urban population

56
Linkages between the Formal and Informal Sector

• earlier studies show a clear distinction between
  the informal and the formal sector
• recent studies emphasize that both sectors cannot
  be dealt with as two separate and independent
  spheres
• Indeed there exists a number of linkages and
  interdependencies
• Following Singh (1996) one can find upward
  vertical linkages and downward vertical
  linkages
• Downward vertical linkages refer to the sale of
  goods and services from the formal to the
  informal sector
• upward vertical linkages stand for the other
  direction of transfer the sale of goods and
  services from the informal to the formal sector

57
Linkages between the Formal and Informal Sector

• example subcontracting requires cheap and
  flexible employees, i.e. workers who are not
  bound to stable working contracts and social
  insurances, it leads to price cuts of the
  informal produced goods and the low status of the
  respective employees (Singh 199650)
• fact that many informal enterprises nevertheless
  work on a sub-contract-basis for the formal
  economy indicates that the informal sector is to
  a large extent dependent on external orders

58
Research Project Living and Working in the
Slums of Mumbai
Gruber, Denis et al. (2004) Living and Working
in Slums of Mumbai, University of Magdeburg,
Institute for Sociology, Working Paper no.33
(under supervision by Prof. Dr. Heiko Schrader)
59
Mumbai as one of the largest Asian and world
metropoles has a population of almost 18
million people and between one-third and
one-half of them live in slums. The rapidity
and massive volume of this rural-to-urban
migration intensifies slum formation.
60
Living and Working in Slums of Mumbai
61
What are Slums?

• term slum has many nuances and meanings
• slum often refers to settlements lacking basic
  human needs and services
• first appeared in the 1820s, the term slum has
  been used to identify the poorest quality
  housing, and the most unsanitary conditions
• vice and drug abuse
• refuge for marginal activities including crime
• a likely source for many epidemics that
  devastated urban areas
• a place apart from all that was decent and
  wholesome
• UN-expert-group defines slums as follows
• A slum is an area that combines the
  characteristics, of a) inadequate access to safe
  water b) inadequate access to sanitation and
  other infrastructure c) poor structural quality
  of housing d) overcrowding and e) insecure
  residential status (cf. UN-Habitat 2003)

62
What are Slums?

• important living and working areas
• cannot be seen isolated from the urban contexts
  as well as from both national and international
  policies and economies
• are offering possibilities for million of people
  to find jobs
• can produce commodities and social networks,
  which play an significant role in both the world
  economy and in survival strategies
• people in slums are vulnerable due to their
  socio-structural conditions and because they live
  in slums
• lack of basic civil rights
• informal character of slums which results from
  an illegal, but very often tolerated, status of
  the squatters (Schrader 2004)

63
Slums and Squatting

• Squatters in most cases have no legal and
  documented right to stay
• Squatting can be understood as the appropriation
  of another persons land for ones own use
  without title or rights
• about 6 million people in Mumbai live in very
  poor conditions and degraded forms of housing
• they lack basic standards of livelihood, such as
  sanitary facilities, hygienic conditions, and
  medical care
• especially things get even worse during monsoon
  times when people face destruction of their huts
  by water and mud
• mostly there are no education facilities in the
  slums and people cannot afford to send their
  children to school farther away

64
Tab1 Investigated Slums
65
Dharavi

• With a population of about 800 000 people,
  Dharavi is supposed to be the largest slum in
  Asia
• it was founded by the Koli fisher folk in the
  19th century
• it was located outside Bombay and integrated into
  the urban area not until 1872
• after the first tannery was founded in 1887, many
  tanners began to settle
• at the end of the 1890s, migrants from Tamil Nadu
  followed
• The following decades mainly potters from Gujarat
  and Saurashta as well as people from the rural
  areas of Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
  came to Dharavi in search for work
• cf. Data Survey (YUVA 2001), Panwalker 19982640

66
Leather Production Unit

• leather production unit of B. was founded about
  15 years ago
• It is representative for the various
  family-networks found in the informal sector
• All people involved belong to the same Charmakar
  family (rank third in the state, among the other
  two major scheduled castes in Maharashtra)
• due to cultural heritage the passing of knowledge
  from one family member to another, land a policy
  of monopolisation of the traditional caste
  occupation, leatherwork still seems to be
  attached to the caste
• Another reason could simply be that leatherwork
  guarantees minimum subsistence in the absence of
  any other source of livelihood

67
Leather Production Unit

• working process contains the processing of the
  raw material bought from the tanneries up to the
  final products like leather wallets, belts or
  hand bags
• B. himself works at this place and
• supervises
• his employees are not paid per piece
• but per working time
• they hardly leave the working place
• during working hours, which often
• exceed 75 hours per week
• there is a break of one and a half hour
• at noon, and Sundays are off-days
• people are sitting on chatais
• (straw mats from Gujarat) on the floor
• the room in the ground floor might
• have 3 times 5 metres in size and has
  ventilation

68
Leather Production Unit

• big dark looking dirty hall
• five men are working in the hall each of
• them separate
• a big cutting machine is standing next to
• the entrance
• a room which is half closed on the left
• side, with some dirty tables and chairs in
• front of it, is used for storing the
• chemicals
• one can see canisters of chemicals for
• bleaching and tanning the leather

69
Jeans Production Unit

• three men and four women, the youngest perhaps 16
  or 17 yrs.
• produce between 100 to 200 jeans per day
• according to the Production manager H. there is a
  brotherly / sisterly relationship among the
  labourers, even although the workers belong to
  different castes and religions
• - production process includes every step from
  the purchase of
• the raw material from Mumbai markets to the
  final packed product
• jeans production takes place in a room that is
  about 50 square metres in size
• working time varies between eight and ten hours
  per day
• working conditions (ventilation, light) are good
• H. sales price for one jeans is 90 Rupees,
  whereas it is sold for 150 to 250 Rupees. in the
  Mumbai markets

70
Settlement Unit Bharantinga Nagar Ekta (Kurla)

• was founded about 15 years ago
• like Dharavi, it is located close to a railway
  line and station, which guarantees access to
  transport and work in more distant places of
  Bombay
• slum is surrounded by apartment blocks (so-called
  shawls) of the former workers class
• outside the slum are huge heaps of rubbish and a
  ditch that replace a sewerage system
• here only Muslims live therefore, this slum
  reflects a very homogenous social composition

71
The sewing unit of S. A.

• was founded 14 years ago by S. A.
• In the main building work ten men in the age of
  26 up to 40 years and three children in the age
  of 11 to 16 years
• all labours are Muslims from Westbengal
• they have no fixed contracts but are recruited
  every day anew ? total dependence on the demand
  of the local market.
• working time covers ten hours a day
• salary is 100 Rs. a day
• workers are using twelve sewing machines but
  beside this they do not employ any high
  technology
• labours are sitting on chairs
• Indian posters cover the walls
• there is a radio and neon lights on the ceiling
• In an adjoining room S. A. employs another six
  boys in the age from 15 to 16 years
• Each day they have to work from 9 a.m. until 22
  p.m. with a lunch break for a period of two hours

72
A Glass Engraving and Embroidery Workshop

• N. S. runs a glass engraving and embroidery
  workshop
• 15 young boys, some of them below the age of
  fourteen, are working here under miserable
  conditions for 14 hours, seven days a week
• a man supervises their work
• they earn 30 Rupees a day, and the salary is paid
  every second week
• boys are sitting on the bare floor
• There are neon lights, two ventilators, a radio,
  and drinking water available
• Adjacent to the working room there is a dark
  lunchroom without windows
• despite one ventilator, it is stuffy
• In Muslim communities, only boys work in such
  units, while girls are kept at home and sent to
  school

73
Slum in Kalina

• this slum was founded in 1910
• five to six persons live in each of the 3,000 to
  4,000 houses
• main population consists of Dalits from the
  coastal regions of Maharashtra
• there are no working units in the slum region and
  people have to find work outside the slum
• people are often employed in the fields of house
  keeping, painting, construction, or catering via
  informal networking within the slum community
• there is a striking sense of community in Kalina
  If somebody gets sick, the others collect money
  to care for the family or they inform the
  relatives when somebody has died
• social support within the community is also
  documented in that younger people pay 10 Rupees
  every month in a cashbox for communal
  acquisitions
• regarding the educational possibilities, Kalina
  was the only place where school education was
  almost usual and more and more children even
  graduate due to the educational awareness of the
  Dalits
• following Dr. Ambhedkars call for mass
  conversion in the 1950s many Dalit families
  converted from Hinduism to Buddhism and are thus
  called Neo-Buddhists.

74
Interview with the oldest Member of the Slum
Community

• 95 years old, B.G. settled at Kalina with his
  family in 1920
• he came from the coastal region closed to Mumbai
• His self-made house has no solid foundation and
  the roof
• consists of corrugated iron what leads to a great
  heat inside
• Fifteen years ago, there was no electricity in
  this poor area
• meanwhile electricity has replaced kerosene
• Water is available three hours in the morning
• B. G. went to school in 1935 but he did not
  graduate
• wonders why the students from the close Mumbai
  University never come to investigate their living
  conditions. Somehow aghast he states Nobody
  understands. Nobody is interested.

75
Interview with B.G.s Sister

• 85-year woman
• house has no stable foundation
• possesses a proper roof and a separate washing
• and cooking place
• glass cabinet with a small collection of western
  stuff
• tells that females mostly contribute to the
  family income
• by working as maids (house cleaner) in
  other households, doing the laundry and preparing
  food

76
The slum Matfalan

• about 25,000 migrants, mainly from Maharashtra,
  had settled in Matfalan more than twenty-five
  years ago close to the railway line to Pune
• The reason was a large factory that offered work
  for migrants, and the migrant labours encroached
  land next to the enterprise where they worked and
  were tolerated by the authorities
• in 1984 the company was closed down
• In spite of lack of work the squatters remained
  on the land that was owned by the Maharashtra
  government, since their were no job opportunities
  in their home regions either

77
The slum Matfalan

• in spite of their long staying they have not
  been acknowledged by the government as a
  legalised slum
• municipality demolished their homes and even a
  school for the fourth time, the last time shortly
  before we came
• almost everything takes place in open air there
  are merely bamboo and plastic hut constructions
  where people find shelter
• next water tap is about four kilometres away
• indicator of poverty is also obvious that many
  people walk barefooted, while most slum-dwellers
  can afford shoes