Servitude and Sacrifice: Masculinity and domestic labour
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Abstract
What does it mean to be a male servant in modern India? The richanthropological literatures on ‘home’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘work’ have beenoddly remiss in addressing the issue of masculinity and domestic work.More often spoken for than speaking, the life of a servant has anindistinct quality that begs attention. Using biography as a method toframe life lived as a male servant I suggest that a ‘servant biography’ is
completed only in a subsequent life with which it is linked,
imaginatively and substantively. Further, the historiography of servitudepositions the female worker as the principal actor, so that the templateupon which an understanding of domestic work is built is feminine.Additionally drawing on the literature on veiling and gender, I setmyself the task of retrieving the male servant.
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