Abstract
Craig Jeffrey’s Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India is a commanding and lucid ethnography of the social and political impacts of globalized development and liberalization in the everyday lives of youth and middle-class groups more generally in contemporary Indian society. The account is centrally focused on the experiences of young men from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) for whom individual aspirations and the promises of postcolonial middle-class Indian society confront and give way to protracted encounters with waiting. Timepass, which, in India, is idiomatic for ‘ways to pass the time’ (p. 4), encapsulates multiple registers of waiting; with each successive chapter, Jeffrey deftly elucidates the nuanced, often contradictory, and perhaps unexpected politics of waiting that play out within the orbit of these young men’s lives.
Rather than producing a metanarrative on the meaning of waiting, Jeffrey employs ‘an ethnographic approach that discusses the nature and social implications of waiting from the perspective of a struggling middle class’ (p. 5). The result is a compelling, focused, and frequently witty examination of efforts to adapt to living amid ‘the shards of global capitalism’ as Cindi Katz (1991: 1214) describes contemporary development. Chapter 1 describes the social context, research methods, and theoretical framework used, particularly Bourdieu’s analysis of class position and ‘fields’ of social competition. This introductory chapter also calls attention to the limits of an unqualified application of Bourdieu’s ideas. In light of his astute attention to the micro-level politics and related negotiations that saturate day-to-day life in Meerut, Jeffrey advances a more nuanced and subtle analysis to apprehend the everyday strategies and navigation of class position. Chapter 2 explores changes in Indian society that precipitated the current state of ennui experienced by middle-class young men in UP. When the promise of liberal reforms for this generation’s parents – many of whom were wealthy rural farmers – began to disintegrate, families shifted their investments from farming and related enterprises to education. By ensuring their sons received an education, these farmers sought to secure their futures, as education was intended to afford greater opportunities for employment in state government positions for the younger generation. But increasing privatization within the education sector, a university system that reflects the lingering influence of British colonial rule, along with changing structures and practices of government within Indian society have led to greater competition, corruption is taken-for-granted, inequalities abound, and, for many young men, once anticipated opportunities are now foreclosed. As a result everyday life in Meerut has become one where resources are diverted, goals are deferred, and young men dwell in long-term states of timepass. Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the lives of young middle-class men and their responses to being immersed in a state of waiting as well as their often innovative attempts to divert time, energy, and knowledge to different realms in an effort to support and shore up a future for themselves. Chapter 3 examines how timepass manifests as a day-to-day sensibility that ranges from a pervasive sense of having been left behind, to hopes that pursuing education will serve ‘as a prophylactic against the hardships of unemployment’ (p. 88), to the development of an intimate and playful masculine youth culture. In this mix, various public and commercial spaces are appropriated with varying consequences and stereotypes related to class and caste frequently interrupted. As with other chapters, Chapter 4 presents ‘profiles’ as well as interview excerpts in order to focus on various political actors, the strategies available to them, and the types of issues – such as maladministration within the university system – that motivate student protests. Chapter 5 homes in on caste differences among student leaders and the emergence of a culture of improvised ‘political entrepreneurialism’ (p. 161) particularly among a group of Jat students referred to as ‘fixers’. These individuals are adept at ‘playing the field’, courting student support as advocates for social change, while simultaneously engaging in many of the same practices that frustrate young people and stymie opportunities. The concluding chapter synthesizes general findings and outlines the broader theoretical and practical implications of this work.
Overall, this is a cogent account, each chapter offering insight into the cascading effects as well as the ironies of waiting in contemporary Indian society. Scholars, whose work addresses youth in the global south, migrants, and marginalized or immobilized groups more generally, recount experiences that parallel those detailed with eloquence in this book (for example, Ralph, 2008; Schuster, 2011). What makes Jeffrey’s account a particularly significant contribution is a refusal to see waiting merely as a passive experience. Instead, he is keenly attuned to how waiting ‘was not wholly purposeless … it offered opportunities to acquire skills, fashion new cultural styles and mobilize politically’ (p. 4). In this way, Jeffrey’s ethnographic account furthers globalization and development studies scholarship to consider the ways waiting produces new ways of being, new forms of sociality, and new opportunities for politics and social transformation; thus, it represents a welcome addition to an arena where interest and attention is burgeoning among scholars (see Hyndman and Giles, 2011; Mountz, 2011). Additionally, Jeffrey’s focus on productive registers of waiting is especially important because it highlights the relationship between timepass and young people’s drive to mobilize, participate in social movements, or bring about social transformations by other means. As such, this account suggests that to relegate waiting among marginalized groups as unimportant or insignificant may be ill-advised. In this vein, the concluding chapter outlines several policy implications of Jeffrey’s work.
Gender is a recurring focus throughout the book, specifically gender relations between young women and men of this generation, opportunities afforded to or restricted for women, and how shifting gender dynamics are spatialized in light of the protracted experiences of waiting among young men in Meerut. Attending to gender in this manner serves to balance the explicit and valuable focus on young men’s lives, while it also helps to impart a clear sense of the broader impact of timepass. One hopes that anthropology and geography students and scholars of postcolonial India will take up this book’s lead with more detailed examinations of changing gender dynamics, particularly as they impact women, in this milieu; as Jeffrey indicates in the final chapter, ‘there is a pressing need for future research into how young women contest, navigate and shape the gendered practices … described in this book’ (p. 178).
Given that this is an enjoyable and inspiring book, identifying weak points seems cavalier; however, there are a few minor points to be made. First, whereas Jeffrey’s analysis lends significant insight and extension of Bourdieu’s ideas, there are points where the opportunity to elaborate feels underdeveloped; in particular, analysis of the abundant empirical evidence of ‘fields’ seems abbreviated given the overall importance of this concept in the book. Similarly, there are a few instances where tantalizing insights are outlined but rather briefly; for example, Chapter 3 gestures to key distinctions between rural and urban timepass. Publishing and other constraints are likely to have hindered more detailed elaboration, thus I raise this issue, not to question Jeffrey’s careful eye and sharp analysis but, instead, to note that we have much to look forward to as these facets of the study are developed further in future work.
There were also moments when I wished for more general information, such as a clearer image of the geography of spaces where student protests took place or a sense of the number of students in attendance at demonstrations. Similarly, and for all its fine-grained detail, at times, I would have appreciated more detailed descriptions of specific spaces such as tea stalls and university bureaucrats’ offices in order to better apprehend how waiting, protest, and politics are spatialized within these contexts. While this may reflect my own bias as a reader, to more clearly visualize – perhaps with the inclusion of a selection of photographs like the one used on the book’s cover – would, I think, more readily facilitate comparative work within other locales.
Finally, this book is a timely rejoinder to another dimension of politics, that of education and the temporality of research. As I write this review the National Science Foundation and funding for what are egregiously described as ‘the whimsy[s] of individual researchers’ (Coburn, 2011: 52) have come under attack with recommendations including the introduction of metrics and increased grantee accountability, while sources of support for international education and research such as the Fulbright-Hays program have been subject to significant cuts (Willheim, 2011). With this, the likelihood of securing funding as well as institutional support for studies like Timepass becomes ever more scarce. Against this backdrop, Jeffrey’s account offers important testimony to the rigorous quality and depth of insight that come from extensive qualitative research over periods of time in an international research setting. At a time when support for research and scholarship that is cultivated over a generous – and, I would argue, vital – timespan is becoming increasingly hard to come by, not only is Craig Jeffrey’s Timepass a substantial contribution to globalization studies and human geography, it is also a reminder of the deep understanding and critically important possibilities for knowledge that attend with opportunities for in-depth, longitudinal research.