"Narratives of Technological Globalization and Outsourced Call Centers in India: Droids, Mimic Machines, Automatons, and Bad 'Borgs"

Abstract

Taking as a premise that contemporary communication and information technology-aided globalization is a world-making practice that relies on narratives to construct and transmit global imaginaries and relational identities, this project evaluates narrative discourses of Indian call centers serving clients and customers in the United States in order to analyze evolving hegemonic narratives of the "global" of late capitalism. In this project, I argue that constellations of local, national, and transnational hegemonies map outsourced Indian call centers into a position in capitalist geography at which vectors of the production of national, corporate, and racial identities converge in the technological production of power. Specifically, I look at assemblages of narratives corresponding to four tropes that metaphorize Indian tech workers as machines--the oriental droid, the mimic machine, the productive automaton, and the bad 'borg--how each metaphor is reinforced by labor processes in the call center, and how these are assimilated into new forms of subjugation to further extend and entrench participation in zero-sum economics across the globe.