How Language, Labor, and Life become Global
Using India’s call centers as sites to study global change, Aneesh explores the careful work that goes into transforming language, labor, and life in order for global integrations to take place. While acknowledging the global economy’s functional triumphs, Aneesh argues that it is equally important to understand a resulting paradox: dysfunctions of a world gone zealously functional. This paradox suffuses the lives of call center agents, and increasingly, Aneesh argues, all our lives.
A. Aneesh is Director of the Institute of World Affairs and Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Previously, he taught in the Science and Technology Program at Stanford University (2001-04). He is the author of two books, Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization (2006) and Neutral Accent: How Language, Labor and Life Become Global (2015), and co-editor of two books, Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices (2011) and The Long 1968: Revisions and New Perspectives (2013). He has received awards and grants from many institutes, including the McArthur Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Population Council, and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. He serves on the editorial boards of three sociology journals, and has written for the newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Times of India.