Title: 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
2Themenübersicht
- 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
3Themenübersicht
- 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
4Themenübersicht
- 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
6Concepts of Lifestyle
7Key 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?
8Concepts 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
9Approaches 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
10Lebensführung-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
11Georg Simmel
- Simmel began with the elements of everyday life
- - playing games
- keeping secrets
- being a stranger
- forming friendships
- the quality of relationships
12Georg 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
13Erving 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?
14Concept 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) - .
15Concept 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
16Concept 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
17Concept 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
19Summary 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
21Key words for social structure analysis
- Group (subgroups)
- Caste
- Stand ? Status
- Class
- Layer
- Milieu
- Lifestyles
social life situations
22Class 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
23Social 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)
24Social 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
25Social 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
26Habitus 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
27The 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
28Social 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)
29Towards 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
30Towards 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.
31After 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
32Core values of the SINUS milieus
33Social 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 ?
34Social milieus in West Germany according to SINUS
1998
Social position ?
Value orientation ?
35Sinus Milieus - France
Quelle (Abb.) www.sinus-sociovision.de
36Sinus-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
38Socialisms principles
- egalitarianism or equality ? Capitalism exploits
the very people who create societys wealth. - Moralism ? social justice and true liberty for
all.
39Karl 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 -
40Communist 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.
41The 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.
42Real-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)
43Real-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
44The 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
45Lebensführung 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
46Discussing 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
47Discussing 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
48Modernization 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?
49Path 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
50Path 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
52Informal 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
53Describing 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
54Describing 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
55The 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
56Linkages 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
57Linkages 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
58Research 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)
59Mumbai 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.
60Living and Working in Slums of Mumbai
61What 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)
62What 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)
63Slums 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
64Tab1 Investigated Slums
65Dharavi
- 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
66Leather 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
67Leather 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
68Leather 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
69Jeans 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
71The 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
72A 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
73Slum 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.
74Interview 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.
75Interview 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
76The 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
77The 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