Anthropology Research Seminar: Dr Thomas Chambers (Oxford Brookes)

This presentation is based on a paper co-written by Thomas Chambersa and Shalini Groverb

a School of Law & Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK; bInternational Inequalities Institute (III), LSE, London, UK.

Our seminar presentation introduces and conceptualises ‘protective care’ – a masculinised and commodified form of caregiving – involving male domestic workers (MDWs) in India. Drawing on ethnographic research, we describe how MDWs negotiate gendered authority within feminized and stigmatised labour. Challenging portrayals of MDWs as passive or silenced, we highlight constrained agency and efforts to assert masculine respectability. By linking empirical insights from India with debates on ‘caring masculinities’, we show how protective care recodes hegemonic norms. Ultimately, protective care emerges as both an adaptation and constraint; it enables assertions of paternal authority in domestic workplaces, but is also a commodity that must be carefully performed to meet expectations of employers within marginalised and informalized labour regimes.

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