SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the achievements of the Social Structure of Accumulation School (SSA) in contributing to our understanding of Indian informal capitalism. At the same time, it also indicates ways to integrate this approach with other theoretical lenses, either concerned with the different ‘forms’ exploitation can take, or with social reproduction; two themes that are central to explore informal labour relations in the subcontinent. Drawing from evidence collected across India’s Sweatshop Regime over one and a half decades of field-based research around garment export, the chapter shows the benefits of deploying this framework, and illustrate how the social structures paving accumulation in the Indian garment industry interplay with, and are co-constituted by, highly differentiated trajectories of exploitation and social reproduction.