Sheba George – författare

In this follow-up to the highly successful "Ethnography Unbound", Michael Burawoy and nine colleagues break the bounds of conventional sociology, to explore the mutual shaping of local struggles and global forces. In contrast to the lofty debates between radical theorists, these nine studies excavate the dynamics and histories of globalization by extending out from the concrete, everyday world. The authors were participant observers in diverse struggles over extending citizenship, medicalizing breast cancer, dumping toxic waste, privatizing nursing homes, the degradation of work, the withdrawal of welfare rights, and the elaboration of body politics. From their insider vantage points, they show how groups negotiate, circumvent, challenge, and even re-create the complex global web that entangles them. Traversing continents and extending over three years, this collaborative research developed its own distinctive method of 'grounded globalization' to grasp the evaporation of traditional workplaces, the dissolution of enclaved communities, and the fluidity of identities.Forged between the local and global, these compelling essays make a powerful case for ethnography's insight into global dynamics.

With a subtle yet penetrating understanding of the intricate interplay of gender, race, and class, Sheba George examines an unusual immigration pattern to analyze what happens when women who migrate before men become the breadwinners in the family. Focusing on a group of female nurses who moved from India to the United States before their husbands, she shows that this story of economic mobility and professional achievement conceals underlying conditions of upheaval not only in the families and immigrant community but also in the sending community in India. This richly textured and impeccably researched study deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story. "When Women Come First" explains how men who lost social status in the immigration process attempted to reclaim ground by creating new roles for themselves in their church. Ironically, they were stigmatized by other upper class immigrants as men who needed to 'play in the church' because the 'nurses were the bosses' in their homes. At the same time, the nurses were stigmatized as lower class, sexually loose women with too much independence.George's absorbing story of how these women and men negotiate this complicated network provides a groundbreaking perspective on the shifting interactions of two nations and two cultures.