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Sunita has worked at I2U for about a year, and like a good ethnographer, she has observed call center life carefully. She sits across from us at a small table in a quiet office, sharing thoughtful insights in a soft, clear voice: call center labor is changing India’s values; call center life takes its toll; there are costs to modernizing India. Agents are becoming Westernized, she explains, her tone and gaze remaining steady, as though she’s accustomed to the upheavals she describes. Sunita maintains an embodied sense of tradition : full-bodied, with long, straight hair, she dresses in muted colors and casual Indian attire: a salvar kameez,1 scarf, and flat sandals. Sunita spends mostofherwakinghourstalkingtoAmericans,primarilyworkingthenight shift and sleeping during the day. Her schedule leaves her little time to spend with family and friends. She earns more money than her parents and lives with two other agents in a small apartment near I2U. Sunita does not appear to be sentimental about India’s loss of tradition. As an account manager , she recognizes this loss as part of the call center territory. As she puts it, the “older values” of their parents’ generation “are being ignored” as agents find themselves “moving toward the Western culture, Western state of mind.” Not just any Western culture, but the “exposure to the American culture,” in particular, seems to capture agents’ imaginations. Some agents take to partying, dressing in Western clothes, and purchasing status commodities like mobile phones, iPods, designer clothes (both American and Indian), and cars. They use credit cards that the call center agencies make available upon hiring them to make these extravagant purchases. 1 Introduction Answering the Call I’d say a lot of the older values that have come down from previous generations are being ignored. A lot of us are moving toward the Western culture, [the] Western state of mind. I think those things are taking the biggest impact as we get more exposure to the American culture. —sunita, i2u, 2003 2 introduction Call center labor gives agents a sense of being oriented toward the West. The accent and cultural training they undergo and the American clients they serve create a sense of movement toward America. Raja explains that he feels he is, in a sense, in America, or moving between India and America : “Maybe you can say I am living on the edge between the worlds,” Raja explains (365-Call, focus group interview, 2006). “I have to be what I am here and I have to be what I am there.” Raja finds America compelling, but he loves his country, even as he finds himself navigating the liminal space between worlds. Although America has a piece of his heart, India has the fullness of his soul. Raja’s presentation reveals his outward investment in the West: he dresses his short, thin frame in smart blue jeans, Dockers, and an Izod sports shirt. His outward display collides with Raja’s internal code: deep down, Raja values tradition. He respects his parents, he loves his wife, and he wants a traditional family. For instance, although his wife aspires to work in a call center, Raja prefers she keep the home, like his mother still does in their intergenerational household. In these ways, Raja sees himself as irrevocably Indian. Yet Raja simultaneously feels an imagined sense of belonging to America. He spends countless hours talking to Americans, and now he trains and leads twenty agents who must learn to do the same. These experiences have Westernized his business, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities. He likes the modicum of power his work as a team lead provides, and he uses it to bring younger agents up, just as his managers have brought him up. Raja thrives between worlds; he doesn’t really mind being on the fringes of the West. He never wants to actually immigrate to America because in India, he says, he can live like a king. What is at stake in Sunita’s sense of Westernization? How do we account for Raja’s experience of living between worlds, of his sense of continually tacking between here and there? Answer the Call explores these questions and the dynamic new conditions of subject formation that inspire them. Call center labor is part of an emerging form of mediated transnational labor that connects workers in India to corporations and consumers in the United States through high-speed satellite and cable links.2 Although related industries like body shopping move workers across national...

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