Abstract: Anthropologists and scholars of Indigenous peoples generally work to describe what is taking place in Indigenous societies and cultures, while refraining from a critical reflection on those beliefs and practices. In contrast, the present contribution provides a critical reflection on beliefs about witchcraft and practices associated with the persecution of suspected witches. We relate cultural aspects of witch persecution and witch-hunting to economic, social and political processes of change, as well as to the creation or strengthening of patriarchy within Indigenous and rural societies and north east India.

The paper deals with the role of competition and technological domination in changing the world order. It points out that there are constraints in the major Asian economies, which could hamper their ambitions of building technological dominance. Acknowledging that competition and monopolization dominate the history of technological development in global capitalist history, it points to the necessity of cooperation in meeting contemporary global challenges and staving off new forms of devastating warfare.

This chapter explains the persecution of women as witches and why, in some societies and times, women are primarily branded and persecuted as witches. The authors use three variables to explain witch hunts: Patriarchy, cultural beliefs, and structural changes within society. First, witch hunts have been used to enforce women's exclusion from highly valued spiritual knowledge and establish patrilineal property regimes. Second, they have been used to enforce social beliefs in the existence of persons, mainly women, who use supernatural power to cause misfortune, (e.g., illness, deaths, bad crops) in their communities. Third, witch hunts have also been used to protect the old moral economy and, at the same time, to promote the new economy of accumulation. Importantly, the authors note some recent expressions of the rejection of such belief in the witches and demand for proof of witchcraft.

This is a study of the contracting practices of lead firms, who are buyers of garments, in the global market. Based on a survey of garment manufacturers in three clusters in India it reveals the trend to falling margins, reduced lead times, etc. for these contracted suppliers. These contracting practices are shown to connect, often directly, with labour outcomes, such as low wages, high workloads and forced overtime, in supplier factories. Within a joint but differentiated responsibility between lead firms and garment manufacturers, it argues for the prime responsibility of lead firms to provide for adequate wages and reduce the pressure for forced overtime in supplier factories.

In the global production system, there is a division of labour, based on a division of knowledge between lead (headquarter) firms and contract suppliers. While lead firms have, so far, largely been located in the Global North, some countries of the Global South have advanced along to progress from supplier to headquarter firms. This paper studies the manner in which the skill requirement or educational composition of the workforce changes in this process of technological advancement. The countries studied are China, India, and South Korea with the United States of America (USA) taken as the comparator country. The paper starts with the overall trajectory of technological upgrading in these countries. It then analyses the ways in which firm-level research development (R D), taken as the indicator and driver of firms’ technology development strategies, is related to changes in productivity and the educational composition of the workforce. The paper shows that there is a broad positive correlation between the three variables, R D investment, labour productivity and educational composition of the workforce. It points to the need to advance this analysis to look at other workforce indicators, such as the gender composition, wages, the quality of employment and the nature of supervision. At a methodological level, the paper argues that it is necessary to look at the role of a firm within a global value chain (GVC) to understand the composition of its workforce.

The Element highlights the monopolization and exclusion from high-value knowledge in analysing divergent and, recently, partially convergent income trends across 200-odd years of the global capitalist economy. A Southern lens interrogates this history, in the process showing how developing command over knowledge creation sheds light on the middle-income trap. Overall, it shows a new way of looking at global capitalist economic history, highlighting the creation of, command over and exclusion from knowledge. This forces us to analyse the role of the subjective or agential element in making history; a subjective element that, however, always works from within and transforms existing structures and processes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This chapter links some findings on the gendered conditions of gig workers in India with the nature of the platform economy and the techno-nationalist struggles currently underway in this growing sector of the economy. It begins with a summary of the nature of platform economies and its connection with the generalisation of gig work. Platform economies involve struggles between platforms headquartered in different countries. Such struggles between platforms are now very visible in India, featuring almost daily into both electronic and print media. The chapter sets out the different types of platforms operating in India, divided into two broad categories: that of the online, web-based platform and the location-based platform. It then summarises data on the earnings of gig workers in these platforms and other aspects of their working conditions. Gig work involving the use of smartphones and GPS systems requires workers to be digitally literate and to have at least completed their high school education.

In the absence of adequate social security for migrant workers, the recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic forced the mass return of millions of circular migrants who were supported by their rural households of largely left-behind women. In addition, the recession rendered destitute small traders and operators of microenterprises, and reduced the incomes of small-scale farmers. Based on a study of food supply chains, this paper concludes that gendered rural households functioned as safety nets during the severe recession in the Indian economy, which highlights the weakness in state policy and the lack of resources in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the recession did not only result in a temporary loss of income but also increased inequality and strengthened the oligopoly structure of the Indian economy.

This chapter deals with witch hunts, mainly of women, as extreme exclusion. Based on 115 case studies in five states of India, we show the various forms of exclusion of women, often old and unsupported. Witch accusations usually follow illness or some other misfortune. Accused of using supernatural power to cause harm, exclusions range from seizure of land, and forms of levelling of those thought to have illicitly become better off. Exclusion is also from political positions and spiritual knowledge. The ultimate exclusion is death. The chapter also deals with the way in which the state and administration have tried to curb witch hunts, often ineffectually. The witch finders are key actors in the witch persecution process and their influence, based on cultural beliefs of women using supernatural powers to cause harm, needs to be curtailed. In order to end witch hunts, the chapter points to the importance of insisting on evidence of supposed supernatural powers and the fostering of alternative ways of thinking about illness and misfortune. Current norms in these communities need to be changed. In agrarian societies undergoing transformation, it is necessary for the state to both provide effective medical services and forms of social security.

Women's access to resources, such as land or ponds, is governed by few sets of systems. Social functioning, however, is governed not only by such laws, those of the state or of religions, but also by norms of customary practice in a given society. In Bangladesh, for instance, it is customary for Muslim women not to claim their right in inherited property. Khas agricultural land has been largely grabbed by individuals, obviously very much skewed towards the rich and the powerful. Granting user rights in long leases to women to ponds on government-owned lands had to face a combination of two types of problems. Pond owners in Bangladesh, by and large, do not fall in the category of the poor. Consequently, it would seem that aquaculture in ponds should not be part of a poverty-reduction project. Property ownership is a significant marker of status in Bangladesh, as in most other countries.

The article explores knowledge in global value chains (GVCs) and its correspondence with the nature of employment in different GVC segments. It starts with the role of knowledge that is protected through intellectual property rights in creating oligopolies in product markets, which are then re-created as oligopolies in the input markets. Knowledge requirements, transmitted through governance relations and the distribution of power within GVCs, lead to the inter-firm distribution of profits within GVCs, and result in differing qualities of employment corresponding to the level of knowledge required in different production segments.

Platform business models emerged with the growth of the Internet in the 1990s and are conceptualized as two- or multi-sided markets, as they facilitate exchange between service providers, clients (business) and workers. This article focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on digital labour platforms, such as freelance online web-based platforms and location-based platforms (transportation and delivery platforms), which have grown exponentially over the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed immediately some of the vulnerabilities that the workers in the platform economy were facing as they were declared as part of the 'emergency services', and this note explores their conditions during the pandemic.

Digitization has already been occurring, but it has been enormously accelerated in the period of the pandemic.As Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, put it, "We have seen 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months" (Bradley et al. 2020, 3).Some features of digitization have been the growth of telemedicine, online education, video conferencing instead of meetings, remote working and e-commerce, and automated manufacturing.We look at the last three trends mentioned, which are more important from the perspective of reorganization of value chains.

This chapter critically reviews the existing knowledge on livelihoods, poverty, and vulnerability in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). Development in mountain areas and the practices of people in these areas are uniquely conditioned by distinct characteristics that we term "mountain specificities". Some of these specificities—such as inaccessibility, fragility, and marginality—constrain development. Others—such as abundant biological diversity, ecological niches, and adaptation mechanisms—present development opportunities for mountain people.

This chapter is an attempt to answer the 'so what?' question. After all the experience and analyses of global value chains (GVCs), what does it mean for development policy? The chapter starts by first looking at whether GVCs are just the flavour of the year (or the decade?) or they represent a form of firm restructuring that will not go away anytime soon. After summarizing what was pre-GVC development policy, the chapter looks at the benefits for developing countries of entering into GVCs, even at the very lowest level of low-value labour-intensive production.