ABSTRACT
Much of the plantation literature, in South Asia in particular, has focused on plantations as economic sites of production. Through the course of history, plantation systems have in many ways shaped labour relations, social histories, populations and cultural composition. While exhaustive in many respects the works on the tea plantations in India have often failed to address these crucial issues. To address these gaps, this chapter proposes a theoretical framework. In setting out this outline, a critical engagement with the existing scholarship on intersectionality, gendered labour, agency and activism is most useful. The chapter outlines the key intellectual resources in these strands and explores the possibility of meaningfully weaving them together. The chapter proposes a combination of conceptual tools through which this work addresses the gaps in the existing plantation literature in South Asia. Most works on women workers in tea plantations in general and in South Asia in particular focus on the miseries of their daily existence.
