ABSTRACT
This study follows the work, life and struggle of plantation workers in southern India as they emerged from the mid-nineteenth century. It situates the plantation labour at multiple locations: as subject people in the workplace, the local social structure and the world-capitalist economy. While working within an analytical grid constituted by political economy as inspired by historical anthropology, it also seeks to critically engage with two important historiographic traditions – the Subaltern Studies (SS)1 and the World System Analysis (WS).2 It views through this analytics the historical and contemporary conditions that contributed to and sustained the life world and the multiple peripherality of the plantation workers through a century and a half.
