Time for Tea

Piya Chatterjee is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

“Piya Chatterjee presents an innovative ethnography of female tea plantation workers through a kaleidoscope of drama, personal narrative, labor history review, and the interrogations of her subjects. A Time for Tea addresses issues of colonial and postcolonial power structures, transnational flows, subaltern history, labor relations, and feminist ethnography. Tea does not taste the same after one has read this strikingly original book.”-Kirin Narayan, author of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching “This is a finely layered, theoretically astute and informed cultural and historical account of a tea plantation in India. The ethnography is not content to address localized politics and culture; its importance lies in the way in which it reveals the global and political dimensions of local practices of gendered labor.”-Inderpal Grewal, author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel “A Time for Tea says quite a bit about the endurance of women pluckers on a tea plantation in West Bengali called Sarah’s Hope Tea Estate. . . . The world drawn in A Time for Tea is the “other” world of tea, beyond ladies lounging in gauzy gowns upon velvet Victorian chaises, sipping Darjeeling, and munching cucumber sandwiches. . . . Indeed, this is not your typical coffee table tea book. . . . A Time for Tea is an argument for Fair Trade tea -- and more. . . . It ‘stirs the conscious, creates dissonance.’ And perhaps it also will produce a new perspective when you savor your next cuppa pai mu tan.” - Donis W. Ford (Tea - A Magazine) “A detailed history of the labor structure on tea plantations. . . . Interesting. . . . Her use of language, rich in metaphor and allusion. indicates a deep-rooted empathy for these women, which is almost contrary to scholarly detachment. . . . A multifaceted understanding of a complex socioeconomic system.” - Chitrita Banerji (Gastronomica) “Piya Chatterjee’s A Time for Tea is more than a skillful and reflective ethnography of women’s labor in the tea industry in India. Her analysis of the fieldwork she conducted on an Indian plantation is contextualized through a cultural and material history of the tea industry in India, which is intertwined with the politics and economics of empire, the impact of capitalism, and the shifting production and performance of gender, class, and consumption.” - Suzanne Franzway and Mary Margaret Fonow (Signs) "A highly readable ethnography. . . . This book wears its theory lightly but is deftly and often ingeniously written. . . . [A] meditative and reflective work. . . ." - Kamala Visweswaran (American Historical Review) "A tour de force of intimate reflection on the embodied histories and gendered fetishisms at work on a postcolonial plantation. . . . A Time for Tea holds lessons for a remarkable array of audiences, not only in its theoretically astute, well-researched argument but also in a passionate commitment to the poetics and politics of writing in solidarity with subaltern voices without presuming to speak them. . . . Wonderful. . . . Piya Chatterjee is a remarkable, visionary writer. A Time for Tea is an erudite and powerful book that should be read widely and closely." - Sharad Chari (American Ethnologist)

• List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xi1. Alap 12. Travels of Tea, Travels of Empire 203. Cultivating the Garden 514. The Raj Baroque 845. Estates of a New Raj 1156. Discipline and Labor 1687. Village Politics 2358. Protest 2899. A Last Act 325Appendix 327Glossary 333Notes 335Bibliography 383Index 411