Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book looks at how different groups of men in India (of different castes and religions) respond to being educated but not having a job or a job "of one's level." For all the men in the world who have fancy degrees but can barely make or save a nickel, we may relate.
What bothers me is how this book shows even globally, "it's not what you know, but who you know." I'm not well-versed in Pierre Bourdieu, but they quote his work saying even in France the rich get richer and the poor poorer through their connections, or lack thereof, alone. This book tries to examine whether education is good all by itself. (And it would seem to me that their answer is "No!")
Dr. Michele Lamont has an amazing book in which she compares rich white men from France and America. She points to surprising differences. She said the French would read magazines about philosophy, but not be impressed with winners on "Jeopardy!" She said French men boast about having extramarital affairs, an act that is stigmatized in the US (think: blue dress!). This book had that same cultural false cognate. These men said, "Poor men tuck their shirts in!" Well, here, white-collar workers would tuck their shirts in. These men are deemed "educated" for finishing high school; one would have to finish college to be deemed educated here.
I wish the authors would have read Carter G. Woodson's "The Miseducation of the Negro." The interviewees deem themselves better than others because of mannerisms, much more than knowledge. Woodson and others have said the Black elite in the US often clings to this inconsequential stuff. In Black vernacular, such snobs are deemed "bourgie" or bourgeois. I wish I could have heard what Indian men without schooling said about these men and their snobbiness. This book was top-down or one-sided in that regard.
I am disturbed how much caste and religion play roles here. I don't accuse the researchers of being inaccurate. It's just sad that those old divisions are playing out so thoroughly nowadays. All the corruption described too saddened me. We have corruption in the US, but such corruption is playing a key role in keeping underdeveloped countries poor. Wanting cushy outsourced jobs was not the goal here; these interviewees want government jobs. I have heard economists say that moving from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based one is not bad, but I wonder if it is bad when the government is doing the cushy hiring, rather than the private sector. I can't put my finger on it, but it seems problematic.
The authors all have the same last name, but they work in different countries. I am assuming that they are related, but I never saw where they explained their kinship. The cover is appropriate in showing Indians burning their diplomas, but deceptive in that both sexes are shown on the cover when the book just discusses one of them.
The authors don't stress the conclusion that I gleaned: it seems that bettering one's self is a one-sided practice. When citizens educate themselves, perhaps the superstructure needs to do more to accommodate them. One would think that the educated could create jobs, but this book suggests how this is not happening. I wonder if India can do more to address this problem in an aggregate fashion.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Degrees Without Freedom: Education, Masculinities, and Unemployment in North India
Degrees Without Freedom? re-evaluates debates on education, modernity, and social change in contemporary development studies and anthropology. Education is widely imputed with the capacity to transform the prospects of the poor. But in the context of widespread unemployment in rural north India, it is better understood as a contradictory resource, providing marginalized youth with certain freedoms but also drawing them more tightly into systems of inequality. The book advances this argument through detailed case studies of educated but unemployed or underemployed young men in rural western Uttar Pradesh. This book draws on fourteen months' ethnographic research with young men from middle caste Hindu, Muslim, and ex-Untouchable backgrounds. In addition to offering a new perspective on how education affects the rural poor in South Asia, Degrees Without Freedom? includes in-depth reflection on the politics of modernity, changing rural masculinities, and caste and communal politics.
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