Glimpses of hope. The rise of industrial labor at the urban margins of Nepal

Author
Michael Hoffmann

Publisher
New York, Oxford: Berghahn  

Year of publication
2023

ISBN
978-1-80073-810-2

OPAC

Abstract
Over the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle-class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in areas such as modern food-processing, water-bottling, housebuilding, and sand-mining industries and explores how workers see such forms of work, where union organization can help, and how work opportunities emerge along lines of gender and ethnicity. Although global labor relations have been mostly in decline for decades, this ethnography offers insights and glimpses of hope in terms of labor dynamics and the opportunities various jobs may afford.