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Paper short abstract

This paper reveals how legacies of race and the ongoing operation of caste create new forms of mediation in the neoliberalization of agrarian labor markets, complicating traditional understandings of exploitation and resistance.

Paper long abstract

This paper analyzes the contradictory role of the labor contractor or maistree, who simultaneously disciplines feminized agricultural labor for global markets while collectively bargaining on behalf of workers with farmer-employers. This form of gang labor was imported from Virginia tobacco plantations to colonial India along with the technology for growing Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco, as the British Empire sought to create new producers and consumers of tobacco. Originally relying on racialized enslaved and indentured labor in Virginia, these gangs became constituted through Adivasi (tribal) labor in colonial India. Today in Andhra Pradesh—one of two southern states growing this lucrative tobacco strain—the gangs comprise predominantly women who are exclusively Dalit.

Intermediary figures like labor contractors navigate the tension between market demands for standardized labor and marginalized workers' need for advocacy. This paper reveals how legacies of race and the ongoing operation of caste create new forms of mediation in the neoliberalization of agrarian labor markets, complicating traditional understandings of exploitation and resistance. I analyze how the emotional and affective labor of contractors—as they manage workers' frustrations, farmer demands, and state regulations—becomes central to sustaining India's integration into global tobacco markets while maintaining localized forms of worker solidarity. Feminized agricultural workers develop agency through these mediated relationships, challenging binaries between autonomy and subordination in neoliberal labor arrangements.