Skill acquisition and exclusion: dominant caste dynamics and gendered labour in an Indian ikat weaving cluster

This paper discusses the dynamics of labour processes in an ikat weaving cluster of India, keeping socially embedded knowledge transfers at the core of its analysis. A significant proportion of India’s workers is employed in the ‘unregulated’ informal sector, with self-employment as the dominant form of employment. Despite being embedded in social structures and relations, the informal economy is capable of co-existing in hybrid terms with the ‘formal’. It is also highly dynamic and innovative. In the informal handloom clusters of Bargarh, Odisha, caste and patriarchal control seem to operate as a constitutive mechanism, selectively gatekeeping the knowledge system of bandhakala, the core design system. Production processes mostly occur within household premises, and hence the spheres of production and reproduction overlap. Drawing on findings from interviews and time-use survey, this paper focuses on two questions: (i) how a caste-regulated production organisation in an informal economy of an ikat weaving cluster regulates the dissemination of knowledge processes and (ii) how the gendered production/reproduction of the caste specialisation happens on a day-to-day basis. Women’s work in the productive and reproductive spheres has been examined through time-use narratives.