[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Sudden Selves: 'Personality Development', Tupperware and the Making of New Labour in North India

[Diya Mehra]

The Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi cordially
invite you to a seminar: 

 

'Sudden Selves: 'Personality Development',
Tupperware and the Making of New Labour in North India'

 

By Prof.
Sanjay Srivastava, Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi,

 Wednesday,
2nd April 2014, 2.30 PM, FSI HALL,
South Asian University, Akbar Bhavan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi

 

Across a range of large and small towns in India, a
vast number of privately run ‘coaching institutes' – varying from
hole-in-the-wall operators to multi-million Rupee corporations – offer
‘Personality Development' courses to eager participants that include students,
housewives, business-people and company employees. ‘PD', as it is popularly
known, has become an integral part of the various processes of economic,
cultural, and social transformations that have been visible for the past two
decades or so. It is seen as an indispensable part of acquiring a
'cosmopolitan' personality, one that is necessary for economic as well as
social advancement.  An allied activity is the proliferation of
Multi-Level Marketing schemes such as that promoted by Tupperware. This paper
is based on fieldwork at PD centres and among distributors and
managers of the Tupperware Company. It explores certain ideas of transformation
among young people and middle-aged women in the context of traditional
structures of family and gender norms.