Global "Body Shopping": An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry

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This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( March 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) I find the book most instructive in teaching us how political economic analyses sensitive to fine-grained details about the local and everyday life can enrich a global ethnography. What holds the book together is its creative use of socioanthropological methodologies to understand the phenomenon of 'body shopping' peculiar to the information technology (IT) industry. . . . I find his honesty and the unpredictability of his narratives refreshing."—Mark Lawrence Santiago, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography According to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report to Congress, for fiscal year 2012, 59 percent of H-1B visas went to computer-related occupations. The same report also cited that 64 percent of the H-1B visa petitions granted were given to workers originating from India. [3] [4] Revenue model [ edit ] Xiang Biao tells the fascinating story of how body shopping brought globalization into the lives of hitherto minimally influenced rural youth and facilitated their movement into the highly volatile global arena of information technology . . . he has created a remarkably clear picture of a complex globally dispersed labor chain. . . . Not only does this innovative book provide a strong foundation for scholars interested in this under-researched global labor system, it is a great resource for teaching political and economic geography as well as courses exploring the various facets of globalization."—Monalisa Gangopadhyay, Political Geography

Body shopping in IT originated during the mid-1990s when there was a huge demand for people with mainframe, COBOL and related technology skills to prevent systems being affected by the Y2K bug. The book provides an important corrective to analyses that ignore the lower end of the IT labour market. The discussion of how Indian community associations contribute to workers' quiescence is a valuable addition to Saxenian's insights regarding how such community associations in places such as Silicon Valley promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Biao also goes beyond Castells' emphasis on exclusion through the digital divide to show how the more glamorous parts of the IT industry are sustained in part by the flexibility provided by body-shopped labour and the social reproduction taken on by local communities, extended families and governments. ---Seán Ó Riain, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Bravura ethnographic reportage. Of the many manuscripts and books I have read on anthropological forays into globalization issues, this is the one I would most want my students to have as an exemplar as they plan their research."—George E. Marcus, Rice University, coauthor of Anthropology as Cultural Critique The novelty of this work lies in its attempt to study social groups within the context of the ongoing processes of abstraction and virtualism, as these groups develop strategies to participate in global processes. . . . Xiang's book presents the daily lives, the intricate familial and professional negotiations, calculations and strategies, dreams and speculations through which individual Indians in the finger-labour market survive."—Madhava Prasad, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system--a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.

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Researchers point out that many Indian companies focus heavily on developing a large pool of human resources with technical skills creating a marketplace to 'buy' technical skills on an hourly or daily basis. A] sterling exemplar of what anthropology is and can be today. . . . In a world of anthropologists never-ending anxiety over the loss of cultures, the loss of their own ability to explain cultures, and the problem of finding new things to study, Xiang's book offers a way out: it shows how one can study a structure within a larger system and explain both how that structure works and how it illuminates the function of the larger system. The combination of a simple explanation (hard-won through fieldwork) of a complex technical and economic system, with the exploration of its effects on social and personal lives of an extended network of families, villages, and corporations scattered around the globe is what makes this the perfect 'Intro to Cultural Anthropology' book in my estimation."—Christopher Kelty, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology

A] sterling exemplar of what anthropology is and can be today. . . . In a world of anthropologists never-ending anxiety over the loss of cultures, the loss of their own ability to explain cultures, and the problem of finding new things to study, Xiang's book offers a way out: it shows how one can study a structure within a larger system and explain both how that structure works and how it illuminates the function of the larger system. The combination of a simple explanation (hard-won through fieldwork) of a complex technical and economic system, with the exploration of its effects on social and personal lives of an extended network of families, villages, and corporations scattered around the globe is what makes this the perfect 'Intro to Cultural Anthropology' book in my estimation. ---Christopher Kelty, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology The book is] remarkable for meticulous research, mastery of details and understanding of the structures and processes of the industry. . . . This book must be read—not only by all social scientists, but by all those enthusiastic votaries and skeptical denouncers of IT as India's present and future."—Samita Sen, Global SouthAneesh Aneesh (2006). "Body Shopping". Virtual Migration. Duke University Press. pp. 39–40. ISBN 9780822336693. de Vallance, Brian. "Characteristics of H1B Specialty Occupation Workers". Document Cloud. US Citizenship and Immigration Services . Retrieved 2015-03-28.

Most specialist Y2K consulting companies operating in the US, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and Australia outsourced their technical manpower requirements to companies operating in India. The book provides an important corrective to analyses that ignore the lower end of the IT labour market. The discussion of how Indian community associations contribute to workers' quiescence is a valuable addition to Saxenian's insights regarding how such community associations in places such as Silicon Valley promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Biao also goes beyond Castells' emphasis on exclusion through the digital divide to show how the more glamorous parts of the IT industry are sustained in part by the flexibility provided by body-shopped labour and the social reproduction taken on by local communities, extended families and governments."—Seán Ó Riain, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

A]n extremely well written-book with mega-doses of anthropology mixed with humour. ---Raghunath, Nilanjan, Asian Journal of Social Science Body shopping companies mainly recruit off-shore and provide training to their employees using their off-shore facilities. R. Heeks (1996). India's Software Industry: State Policy, Liberalisation and Industrial Development. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as “body shopping.” In this practice, a group of consultants—body shops—in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project’s completion they either place the workers with a different client or “bench” them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement.