Narrow Fairways is an impressive contribution to ethnographic studies on the various effects of India’s economic liberalization. Published in a series edited by Javier Auyero, “Global and Comparative Ethnography,” the broad context of the study is India’s extraordinary growth via neoliberal policies and the emergence of a new middle class, and even millionaires and billionaires, while basic infrastructure lags and poverty remains entrenched. The book’s introductory discussions challenge the assessments of economists and business analysts who continue to praise India’s development despite its dramatic wealth inequality. Inglis takes issue with the idea of “two Indias,” one rich and another poor, and insists instead that the two are connected ever more deeply through neoliberal globalization. The effects of these connections, the book argues, is the clear reproduction of class inequality. At the same time, many individuals, including those of marginalized caste and religious backgrounds, have progressed in this economy. Thus, the book sets out to understand the “nature of social mobility” and asks why some achieve mobility and others do not. This bears similarity with the fundamental question in Katherine Boo’s Pulitzer-prize winning book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) that takes place in the slums of Mumbai.
Set in the Southern Indian metropolis of Bangalore, a city that developed in recent decades under the business-friendly “Bangalore model” (4), Narrow Fairways introduces us to the unusual case of low-income golf caddy workers at three of the city’s members-only golf clubs. While skeptical at first, I was quickly taken in by the elegant design of the study, the field sites themselves, and the riveting accounts of the caddies, the golf club members, and their relationships. By the end of the book I felt invested in their stories and in the author’s analyses. One of the many advantages of studying golf clubs was the access it gave to the worldviews of wealthy Indian elites.
Inglis followed the lives of his interlocutors over the span of an entire decade. The research consisted of participant observation as a club member taking golf lessons; ethnographic observation of families and primary schools where the children of golf caddies were enrolled; 178 interviews; two surveys carried out at the clubs; and all of the conversations and communications that accumulate over such long-term fieldwork. The book opens with a dramatis personae, which I found useful to refer back to as I encountered different sites and families in each chapter. Overall, the book is divided into four sections: Labor & Land; Servility, Deference & Place; Opportunity Costs; and Getting By & Falling Behind.
A central theme running throughout the book is the financial support wealthy club members gave to the caddies, who in turn might even privately refer to them as “gods.” As one caddy explained matter-of-factly to the author, “Members give out crumbs, and off that, we live” (2). Among these crumbs were “lessons in class, power, and respect” (2). Caddies received knowledge of English, class etiquette, and other symbolic markers of status. Club members occasionally funded medical emergencies for caddies and their families, paid school fees for their children, and in some outlying cases profoundly changed the trajectory of a worker’s life. As caddy workers are neither salaried nor contract workers, and suffer precarious and unregulated conditions, these were important potential safety nets. Inglis refers to club members as “governments-in-miniature” (10). But they are not, as Inglis argues, a path to development.
Although elite members critiqued India’s economic path, they nonetheless directly benefited from it. The golf clubs in fact received government subsidies, did not pay taxes, or even sat on public land. But the irony, Inglis tells us, is that caddies preferred the informal nature of their work in part because they relied so much on support from wealthy members. Inglis explores the lack of interest in labor organizing among caddies and frequently laments their lack of worker solidarity. While class consciousness among the caddies ebbed and flowed, the dominant trend over time was the production of a neoliberal subjectivity, dare I say, a spirit of capitalism. “If I lose the eighty lakhs [rupees] only for drinking and enjoying, then it’s gone” [229], affirmed one interlocutor. Caddies thus focused on performing servility to win favor with members alongside other behaviors like avoiding alcohol and dressing decently. They managed a general anxiety about class performance at the clubs but also within their neighborhoods and extended families. Yet for some workers, the tight relationship of paternalism and dependence on club members was emotionally oppressive and took a toll. Meanwhile, the wealth and status of elites remained untouched, and maybe even solidified.
As the workers aspired to home ownership and securing a comfortable life for their children, some sadly gained neither social nor economic mobility. Through their stories, the book challenges common understandings about social mobility, casting doubt on even the relative value of higher education. It explores especially the poor quality of primary schools and the widespread phenomenon of families pressured to sell their land, leaving them with no assets. Both these factors make it difficult or impossible for some to better their conditions.
Narrows Fairways is a remarkable book not only for the ethnographic richness beautifully expressed in Inglis’s writing, but for the careful attention to caste, religious background, and to a lesser extent gender. The study looked at both landowning castes and Dalits. Caddies went to great lengths to deny the impact of caste, sometimes contradicting themselves. Yet their experiences illustrate the complexity of caste in the contemporary period, in what ways it continues to exert social force and in what ways it has become less important to people’s trajectories. All the while, of course, the position and power of elites is firmly reproduced.
A common pitfall in ethnographies as deep as this one is that sometimes the book’s central and theoretical contributions become buried. As the book introduces a number of different people and their families in each chapter, I found myself wishing the author had been more discerning about which stories to convey and been more explicit about the central point. The book is delightfully accessible and a pleasure to read. And perhaps this quality would have been sacrificed had the author detoured into theoretical discussions. On the other hand, the themes the book raises require more theoretical framing to help the reader better appreciate their importance. For example, there exists a larger literature on patronage in India (e.g. the work of Anastasia Piliavsky) and elsewhere (e.g. the work of Javier Auyero). The book also focuses a good deal on moral judgments among workers. Inglis at times seemed almost irritated by workers’ individualizing explanations for success and failure and their lack of class consciousness. Apart from references to Bourdieu, which Inglis includes, literature on why people have the need to believe certain narratives about themselves would have been helpful. Finally, “luck” and “dumb luck” occasionally appear as key to an individual’s social mobility, an explanation that left me wanting more discussion or an alternative way to think about the issue.
Curiously, the book does not include a methodological appendix, and the reader may be left with several questions. One of these involves the use of interpreters, which the author mentions a few times without elaborating on the role they played in the research. There are occasional references to Inglis’s own interventions in people’s lives, and occasional monetary and other gifts (standard fare for researchers especially in poor communities), but no systematic discussion. While such an appendix is not exactly necessary, fellow ethnographers and students may have enjoyed learning from Inglis’s rich experiences.
Overall, Narrow Fairways is a superb and heartfelt ethnography. It elevates the voices of a marginalized group of workers, inviting readers to sympathize with their struggles and dreams and to better understand the gross and contradictory impact of neoliberal development. It would be an excellent choice for either advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars on globalization, ethnography, labor, and/or South Asia.
