| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The moral perils believed to be associated with the giving and receiving of dan (giving) have been widely noted by anthropologists of South Asia. However, among these studies of Indian giving and exchange, less attention has been devoted to exploring how and why commercial transactions become a site of moral condemnation. Drawing upon twenty months of fieldwork with the boys who operated as commission agents or dalals in the foreign tourist economy in the city of Banaras, I demonstrate how the youths regarded these earnings as morally problematic. I argue that the various condemnations of dalali (commission) were symptomatic of a set of deeper concerns regarding the impact of foreign tourism, the future of the boys and their families, and ultimately the (re)production of the socio-cultural order itself. Furthermore, I argue that narratives about the dangers of dalali took on significance because they intersected with more pervasive, highly ambivalent reactions to modernity in India. As such, the conceptions of the dangers of dalali and danprovided people with a concrete way to address social changes that seemed at once overwhelming yet inchoate.
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