The Handloom Industry of Begampur in Transition

The Handloom Industry of Begampur in Transition: Technology, Disjuncture and Development provides an ethnographic description of the handloom industry of the Begampur region, which is situated in the Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal. While explaining the process of transformation within the handloom industry of Bengampur region, Abhradip Banerjee explains the uneasy relationship between technology, disjuncture, and development that has been making an impact upon the lives of this particular group of artisans for over two decades. The novelty of this book lies in the particular approach adopted by the author which allowed him to perceive and analyze the process of transition within the handloom weaving tradition of Begampur region from a more inclusive perspective, miles away from the pitfall of gross technological determinism. Viewing the handloom industry of Begampur as a form of sociotechnical system allowed him to gauge, analyze, and incorporate several important but neglected dimensions of this transformation, which otherwise mostly went missing in many historiographic or empirical accounts regarding the process of industrialization /deindustrialization and class formation in India.